
Q^A^Eimi 



Book 



i iylt 



-^ 




Professor John Rusk in, M.A. 




Precious 
Thoughts 



JOHN RUSKIN 



MM-CALDWELL 

COMPANY 

NEWyoRK 



C 3 






T.ans/er 
Engineers School lAtXj^ 
June 29,1931 



PREFATORY. 



Much time is wasted by human beings, in 
general, on establishment of systems; and it 
often takes more labour to master the intricacies 
of an artificial connexion, than to remember the 
separate facts which are so carefully connected. 
I suspect that system-makers, in general, are not 
of much more use, each in his own domain, than, 
in that of Pomona, the old women who tie cher- 
ries upon sticks, for the more convenient port- 
ableness of the same. To cultivate well, and 
choose well, your cherries, is of some import- 
ance; but if they can be had in their own wild 
way of clustering about their crabbed stalk, it is 
a better connexion for them than any other; 
and, if they cannot, then, so that they be not 
l)ruised, it makes to a boy of a practical dis- 
position, not much difference whether he gets 
them by hand f ids ^^ or in beaded symmetry on 
the exalting stick. I purpose, therefore, hence- 



Or baskctfuls i 



iii 



IV 



PREFA TOR Y. 



torward to trouble myself little with sticks or 
twine, but to arrange my chapters with a view 
to convenient reference, rather than to any care- 
ful division of subjects, and to follow out, in 
any by-ways that may open, on right hand or 
left, whatever question it seems useful at any 
moment to settle. 




CONTENTS. 



PACK 

Admiration, natural 206 

Advancement 5 

All carving and no meat 104 

All things have their place, 31.^ 

Alpine peasant, the 183 

Angel of the sea, the, 9 

Asceticism, 358 

Associations of beauty, 46 

Associations, human 78 

Assimilation and individuality 339 

Beauty, the Christian theory of, 239 

Beauty, associations of 46 

Be what nature intended, 75 

Boyhoods, the two 444 

Brotherhood, 145 

Browning's appeal for Italy, Mrs., 246 

Candid seeing, 162 

Care for posterity, 423 

Cathedrals, the old 309 

Cheerfulness, 360 

Church, the 42 

Church, the true 104 

Church, in the New Testament, the, 71 

Church, members of the 101 

v 



\'l CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

Classical, the, 272 

Clergymen, 43 

Cloud-balancings, 107 

Clouds as God's dwelling-place 388 

Colour, the sanctity of, 77 

Colour, the nobleness of, 142 

Companionship with nature, 103 

Concession and companionship, 286 

Criticism, base, 67 

Criticism, just 29 

Craig Ellachie! stand fast, 413 

Dante and Spenser, 248 

Dark signs of the times, 55 

Death, fear of, 118 

Defenders of the dead 176 

Development, 134 

Downright facts plainly told i 

Discernment of Christian character 102 

Divine laws, 40 

Discipline and interference, 312 

Dissectors and the dreamers, the, 46 

Division of labour, 279 

Doers, 20 

Doubts, pagan, 405 

Dreamers, 306 

Durer and Salvator, 412 

Education, modern, 58 

Education, the pagan system of, 468 

Earth's children, the humblest of the, 17 

Earth-veil, the 124 

Emotion, ignoble, 264 

Emotions excited by the imagination, 381 

Entanglement, modern 203 



COXTEXI\S. Vl/ 

pac;r 

Facts, seeking for, 137 

Faith, truth, and obedience, 2 

Fancy and reality, 360 

Fear of death, 118 

Flowers, 106 

Flowers, the love of 122 

Food of the soul, the 277 

Formative period, the, 177 

Generalization, right, 176 

Gentleman, the true, 209 

Genius, the man of, 271 

Gloom, 424 

God's place in the human heart, loi 

Goodness of God in creation, 331 

Government, the Divine, 205 

Government, the principles of good, 335 

Good teaching, 180 

Greatness and minuteness, 8 

Gradation, 13S 

Great results 5 

Harvest is ripe, the, 146 

Helpful or the Holy One, the, 25 

Highlander, the, 373 

How to live, 160 

Household altar, the, 379 

Human beings, three orders of, 205 

Human heart, God's place in the, loi 

Idolatry, 326 

Infidelity, 430 

Infidelity in England, 141 

Infidel creed, the modern, 284 

Influence of custom, 132 

Infinity, 88 



Vlll cox TENTS, 

PAGK 

Intemperance 163 

Involuntary instruments of good, 349 

Individuality, assimilation and 339 

Illustrations from the Bible, 45 

Imagination, 187 

Imagination, emotions excited by the 381 

Imagination, excitement of the, 91 

Imperfection 16 

Italy, Mrs. Browning's appeal for, 246 

Interference, Discipline and 312 

Judgment, mercy, and truth, 19 

Justice to the living, 174 

Justice, mercy, and truth, 275 

King's messengers, the 43 

Knowledge, \h^. noble ends of, 389 

Knowledge, partial, 28 

Knowledge, practical 65 

Knowledge, progressive, 261 

Labour in little things, 54 

Law or loyalty, obedience to, 328 

Life, 341 

Life, human, 357 

Life and love, 148 

Life never a jest, 383 

Life, the type of strong and noble, 200 

" Let alone" principle, the 310 

Lessons from leaves, 13 

Lessons from rocks, 3^5 

Liberty, true, 9^ 

Liberty, the best kind of, 242 

Love and fear, 34^ 

Love and trust, r • 140 

Love of change, ,. . , 186, 267 



CONTENTS. iX 

rA(,« 

Love of Nature, 57 

Loss, 245 

Man the image of God 301 

Man of genius, the 271 

Man's delight in God's works 370 

Man's nature, 161 

Man's isolation 299 

Manual labour 64 

Men of gross minds 52 

Mark, St., 27 

Making a right choice, 178 

Mercantile panics, 3S 

Missing the mark 147 

Modern entanglement 203 

Modern greatness, 201 

Mother-nation, the, 274 

Mountain influence, 290 

Mystery of clearness, the, 27 

Mystery in language, 318 

Mystery and unity, 14 

Nature, love of 57 

Nature, companionship with, 103 

Nature, explaining, 120 

Nation's place in history, a, 191 

Nearness and distance, 89 

Nebuchadnezzar curse, the 30 

Novelty, 00 

Obedience to law, or loyalty, 328 

Obedience, faith, truth, and, 2 

Opinions ^7 

Pagan doubts, 405 

Pagan system of education, the 468 

Patronage of Art 103 



X cox TEXTS. 

PAGl 

Peace and war, 91 

Pedestrians, 53 

Perfect and partial truth 320 

Pictures, the use of 158 

Pines and the Swiss 153 

Pine trees 12 

Plagiarism 310 

Pleasures of sight, the 94 

Political economy, 70 

Power of intellect, 258 

Poor, oppression of the, 31 

Poor ? who are the, 34 

Posterity, care for, 423 

P^salm, the nineteenth, 165 

Practical knowledge, 65 

Presence of God 366 

Precipices, I57 

Pre-eminence of the soul, the, 385 

Pride 95 

Prophetic designers, 276 

Prophetic dreams, 407 

Public favour, 68 

Purist and the sensualist, the 193 

Quietness, 209 

Rainbow, the, 144 

Recreation IT9 

Reality, 320 

Reality, fancy and 3C<j 

Respect for the dead, 321 

Respectability of artists, 47 

Responsibility of a rich man, 60 

Reformation, the, 207 

Religion, influence of art on, 243 



CONTENTS. XI 

PAGE 

Reverence, 3^7 

Right generalization, 176 

Reynolds, Sir Joshua, . . . . , 188 

Sacrifice, the spirit of, 350 

Sailors' superstitions, 76 

St. Mark, 27 

Satan, Milton's and Dante's, 368 

Sanctification, 159 

Science, 87 

Science and art, the real use of, 135 

Seeking for facts, 173 

Seriousness and levity i8r 

Self-government, » 161 

Self-knowledge, want of, . , 60 

Shamefacedness, 300 

Sight, the pleasures oi, 94 

Simplicity 266 

Smoke and the whirlwmd, 203 

Spenser, Dante and, 248 

Spenser, theology of, 471 

" Stand fast, Craig Ellachie !' 409 

States of the forest, the, 467 

Striving after perfection, 151 

Speculations, 72 

Sublimity, 16 

Symbol of fear, the, 136 

Symbolism, Christian 408 

Thankfulness, 409 

Theory of beauty, the Christian, 239 

The thinker and the perceiver, 189 

"Thy Kingdom come," 79 

Tithes, 379 

Towers of rock, 184 



Xll CONTE.YTS. 

PAGE 

Trees and communities, 192 

Trees, pine, 12 

Trees, sacred associations with olive 265 

Trifles, care for 411 

True contentment, 6 

Truth of truths, the, gg 

Truth, nothing but, 427 

Truth, symbols of, 150 

Truth, perfect and partial, 320 

Types, iig 

Utilitarianism, 384 

Unkindness, the memory of, 54 

Visible and the tangible, the, 200 

Virtues squared and counted, 227 

Voluntarily admitted restraints 25g 

Vulgarity 86 

Vulgar fractions, it 

War 4g 

War, peace and 91 

War, advantages of, 51 

Wants of modern art, 61 

Warning, a solemn 340 

Wealth, ...» 53 

Weak things made strong, 97 

What use ? 404 

Work and play, 460 

Work, the necessity of, 48 

vVorid a hostelry, this, . 388 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS, 



DOWNRIGHT FACTS PLAINLY TOLD. 

I HAVE been much impressed lately by one of 
the results of the quantity of our books; namely, 
the stern impossibility of getting anything under- 
stood, that required patience to understand. I 
observe always, in the case of my own writings, 
that if ever I state anything which has cost me 
any trouble to ascertain, and which, therefore, 
will probably require a minute or two of reflec- 
tion from the reader before it can be accepted, 
— that statement will not only be misunderstood, 
but in all probability taken to mean something 
very nearly the reverse of what it does mean. 
Now, whatever faults there may be in my 
modes of expression, I know that the words I 
use will always be found, by Johnson's diction- 
ary, to bear, first of all, the sense I use them in; 
and that the sentences, whether awkwardly 
turned or not, will, by the ordinary rules of 



2 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

grammar, bear no other interpretation than that 
I mean them to bear; so that the misunder- 
standing of them must result, ultimately, from 
the mere fact that their matter sometimes re- 
quires a little patience. And I see the same 
kind of misinterpretation put on the words of 
other writers, whenever they require the same 
kind of thought. 

I was at first a little despondent about this; 
but, on the whole, I believe it will have a good 
effect upon our literature for some time to come; 
and then, perhaps, the public may recover its 
patience again. For certainly it is excellent dis- 
cipline for an author to feel that he must say all 
he has to say in the fewest possible words, or 
his reader is sure to skip them; and in the plain- 
est possible words, or his reader will certainly 
misunderstand them. Generally, also, a down- 
right fact may be told in a plain way; and we 
want downright facts at present more than any- 
thing else. 



FAITH, TRUTH, AND OBEDIENCE. 

In the pressing or recommending of any act 
or manner of acting, we have choice of two sepa- 
rate lines of argument: one based on represen- 
tation of the expediency or inherent value of 
the work, which is often small, and always dis- 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 3 

putable; the other based on proofs of its rela- 
tions to the higher orders of human virtue, and 
of its acceptableness, so far as it goes, to Him 
who is the origin of virtue. The former is com- 
monly the more persuasive method, the latter 
assuredly the more conclusive; only it is liable 
to give offence, as if there were irreverence in 
adducing considerations so weighty in treating 
subjects of small temporal importance. I be- 
lieve, however, that no error is more thoughtless 
than this. What is true of the Deity is equally 
true of His Revelation. I have been blamed 
for the familiar introduction of its sacred words. 
I am grieved to have given pain by so doing; 
but my excuse must be my wish that those 
words were made the ground of every argument 
and the test of every action. We have them 
not often enough on our lips, nor deeply enough 
in our memories, nor loyally enough in our lives. 
The snow, the vapour, and the stormy wind fulfil 
His word. Are our acts and thoughts lighter 
and wilder than these— that we should forget 
it? 

I have therefore ventured, at the risk of giv- 
ing to some passages the appearance of irrever- 
ence, to take the higher line of argument wherever 
it appeared clearly traceable; and this, I would 
ask the reader especially to observe, not merely 
because I think it the best mode of reaching 



4 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

ultimate truth, still less because I think the sub- 
ject of more importance than many others; but 
because every subject should surely, at a period 
like the present, be taken up in this spirit, or 
not at all. The aspect of the years that ap- 
proach us is as solemn as it is full of mystery; 
and the weight of evil against which we have to 
contend, is increasing like the letting out of 
water. It is no time for the idleness of meta- 
physics, or the entertainment of the arts. The 
blasphemies of the earth are sounding louder, 
and its miseries heaped heavier every day; and 
if, in the midst of "the exertion which every good 
man is called upon to put forth for their repres- 
sion or relief, it is lawful to ask for a thought, 
for a moment, for a lifting of the finger, in any 
direction but that of the immediate and over- 
whelming need, it is at least incumbent upon us 
to approach the questions in which we would 
engage him, in the spirit which has become the 
habit of his mind, and in the hope that neither 
his zeal nor his usefulness may be checked by 
the withdrawal of an hour which has shown him 
how even those things which seemed mechanical, 
indifferent, or contemptible, depend for their 
perfection upon the acknowledgment of the 
sacred principles of faith, truth, and obedience, 
for which it has been the occupation of his life 
to contend. 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 



ADVANCEMENT. 

Between youth and age there will be found 
differences of seeking, which are not wrong, nor 
of false choice in either, but of different temper- 
ament, the youth sympathizing more with the 
gladness, fulness, and magnificence of things, 
and the gray hairs with their completion, suffi- 
ciency, and repose. And so, neither condemn- 
ing the delights of others, nor altogether dis- 
trustful of our own, we must advance, as we live 
on, from what is brilliant to what is pure, and 
from what is promised to what is fulfilled, and 
from what is our strength to what is our crown, 
only observing in all things how that which is 
indeed wrong, and to be cut up from the root, 
is dislike, and not affection. 



GREAT RESULTS. 

Men often look to bring about great results 
by violent and unprepared effort. But it is only 
in fair and forecast order, "as the earth bring- 
eth forth her bud," that righteousness and praise 
may spring forth before the nations. 



PRE CIO US 7 HO UGH TS. 



TRUE CONTENTMENT. 

The things to be desired for man in a healthy 
state, are that he should not see dreams, but 
realities; that he should not destroy life, but 
save it; and that he should be not rich, but con- 
tent. 

Towards which last state of contentment I do 
not see that the world is at present approximat- 
ing. There are, indeed, two forms of discon- 
tent; one laborious, the other indolent and com- 
plaining. We respect the man of laborious 
desire, but let us not suppose that his restless- 
ness is peace, or his ambition meekness. It is 
because of the special connexion of meekness 
with contentment that it is promised that the 
meek shall " inherit the earth." Neither covet- 
ous men nor the Grave, can inherit anything;* 
they can but consume. Only contentment can 
possess. 

The most helpful and sacred work, therefore^ 
which can at present be done for humanity, is to 
teach people (chiefly by example, as all best 
teaching must be done) not how " to better 
themselves," but how to "satisfy themselves." 

* •• There are three things that are never satisfied, yea, 
four things say not, It is enough: the grave; and the bar- 
ren womb; the earth that is not filled with water; and the 
fire, that saith not, It is enough !" 



PRECIOUS THOUGnrS. 7 

It is the curse of every evil nation and evil 
creature to eat, and not be satisfied. The words 
of blessing are, that they shall eat and be satis- 
fied. And as there is only one kind of water 
which quenches all thirst, so there is only one 
kind of bread which satisfies all hunger, the 
bread of justice or righteousness; which hunger- 
ing after, men shall always be filled, that being 
the bread of Heaven; but hungering after the 
bread, or wages, of unrighteousness, shall not be 
filled, that being the bread of Sodom. 

And, in order to teach men how to be satis- 
fied, it is necessary fully to understand the art 
and joy of humble life, — this, at present, of all 
arts or sciences being the one most needing 
study. Humble life — that is to say, proposing 
to itself no future exaltation, but only a sweet 
continuance; not excluding the idea of fore- 
sight, but wholly of fore-sorrow, and taking no 
troublous thought for coming days: so, also, not 
excluding the idea of providence, or provision,* 
but wholly of accumulation; — the life of domes- 
tic affection and domestic peace, full of sensi- 
tiveness to all elements of costless and kind 
pleasure; — therefore, chiefly to the loveliness of 
the natural world. . '' ^ 



* A bad word, being only "foresight" again in Latin; 
but we have no other good English word for the sense 
into which it has been warped. 



8 PRECIOUS THOraUTS. 

What length and severity of labour may be 
ultimately found necessary for the procuring of 
the due comforts of life, I do not know; neither 
what degree of refinement it is possible to unite 
with the so-called servile occupations of life: but 
this I know, that right economy of labour will, 
as it is understood, assign to each man as much 
as will be healthy for him, and no more; and 
that no refinements are desirable which cannot 
be connected with toil. 



GREATNESS AND MINUTENESS. 

In one sense, and that deep, there is no such 
thing as magnitude. The least thing is as the 
greatest, and one day as a thousand years, in the 
eyes of the Maker of great and small things. In 
another sense, and that close to us and neces- 
sary, there exist both magnitude and value. 
Though not a sparrow falls to the ground un- 
noted, there are yet creatures who are of more 
value than many; and the same Spirit which 
weighs the dust of the earth in a balance, 
counts the isles as a little thing. 

The just temper of human mind in this matter 
may, nevertheless, be told shortly. Greatness 
can only be rightly estimated when minuteness 
is justly reverenced. Greatness is the aggrega- 



J'A'J:C7urs THOUGHTS. 9 

tion of minuteness; nor can its sublimity be felt 
truthfully by any mind unaccustomed to the 
affectionate watching of what is least. 

I have noticed lately, that some lightly-bud- 
ding philosophers have depreciated true great- 
ness; confusing the relations of scale, as they 
bear upon human instinct and morality; reason- 
ing as if a mountain were no nobler than a grain 
of sand, or as if many souls were not of mightier 
interest than one. To whom it must be shortly 
answered that the Lord of power and life knew 
which were His noblest works, when He bade 
His servant watch the play of the Leviathan, 
rather than dissect the spawn of the minnow; 
and that when it comes to practical question 
whether a single soul is to be jeoparded for 
many, and this Leonidas, or Curtius, or Win- 
kelried shall abolish — so far as abolishable — his 
own spirit, that he may save more numerous 
spirits, such question is to be solved by the 
simple human instinct respecting number and 
magnitude, not by reasonings on infinity. 



THE ANGEL OF THE SEA. 

The great Angel of the Sea — rain; — the Angel 
observe, the messenger sent to a special place on 
a special errand. Not the diffused perpetual 



lO PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

presence of the burden of mist, but the going 
and returning of intermittent cloud. All turns 
upon that intermittence. Soft moss on stone 
and rock; — cave-fern of tangled glen; — wayside 
well — perennial, patient, silent, clear; stealing 
through its square font of rough-hewn stone; 
ever thus deep — no more — ^which the winter 
wreck sullies not, the summer thirst wastes not, 
incapable of stain as of decline — where the fallen 
leaf floats undecayed, and the insect darts un- 
denling. Cressed brook and ever-eddying river, 
lifted even in flood scarcely over its stepping- 
stones, — but through all sweet summer keeping 
tremulous music with harp-strings of dark water 
among the silver fingering of the pebbles. Far 
away in the south the strong river Gods have all 
hasted, and gone down to the sea. Wasted and 
burning, white furnaces of blasting sand, their 
broad beds lie ghastly and bare; but here the 
soft wings of the Sea Angel droop still with 
dew, and the shadov/s of their plumes falter on 
the hills: strange laughings, and glitterings of 
silver streamlets, born suddenly, and twined 
about the mossy heights in trickling tinsel, 
answering to them as they wave. 

Nor are those wings colourless. We habitually 
think of the rain-cloud only as dark and gray; 
not knowing that we owe to it perhaps the fair- 
est, though not the most dazzling of the hues 



PRE CIO US 711 UGII TS. I T 

of heaven. Often in our English mornings, llie 
rain-clouds in the dawn form soft level fields, 
which melt imperceptibly into the blue; or 
when of less extent, gather into apparent bars, 
crossing the sheets of broader cloud above; and 
all these bathed throughout in an unspeakable 
light of pure rose-colour, and purple, and amber, 
and blue; not shining, but misty-soft; the barred 
masses, when seen nearer, composed of clusters 
or tresses of cloud, like floss silk; looking as if 
each knot were a little swathe or sheaf of lighted 
rain. No clouds form such skies, none are so 
tender, various, inimitable. 

For these are the robes of love of the Angel 
of the Sea. To these that name is chiefly given, 
the " spreadings of the clouds," from their ex- 
tent, their gentleness, their fulness of rain. 
Note how they are spoken of in Job, xxxvi. v. 
29-31. "By them judgeth he the people; he 
giveth meat in abundance. With clouds he 
covereth the light. He hath hidden the light 
in his hands, and commanded that it should re- 
turn. He speaks of it to his friend; that it is his 
possession, and that he may ascend thereto." 

That, then, is the Sea Angel's message to 
God's friends; that^ the meaning of those strange 
golden lights and purple flushes before the 
morning rain. The rain is sent to judge and 
feed us; but the light is the possession of the 



12 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

friends of God, and they may ascend thereto, — 
where the tabernacle veil will cross and part its 
rays no more. 



PINE TREES. 

Magnificent! — nay, sometimes, almost terrible. 
Other trees, tufting crag or hill, yield to the 
form and sway of the ground, clothe it with soft 
compliance, are partly its subjects, partly its flat- 
terers, partly its comforters. But the pine rises 
in serene resistance; self-contained; nor can I 
ever without awe stay long under a great Alpine 
cliff, far from all house or work of men, looking 
up to its companies of pine, as they stand on the 
inaccessible juts and perilous ledges of the enor- 
mous wall, in quiet multitudes, each like the 
shadow of the one beside it — upright, fixed, 
spectral, as troops of ghosts standing on the walls 
of Hades, not knowing each other — dumb for 
ever. You cannot reach them, cannot cry to 
them; — those trees never heard human voice; 
they are far above all sound but of the winds. 
No foot ever stirred fallen leaf of theirs. All 
comfortless they stand, between the two eter- 
nities of the Vacancy and the Rock: yet with 
such iron will, that the rock itself looks bent and 
shattered beside them — fragile, weak, inconsist- 



PRECIOUS THOUGHrS. 1 3 

ent, compared to their dark energy of delicate 
life, and monotony of enchanted pride: — unnum- 
bered, unconquerable. 



LESSONS FROM LEAVES. 

We men, sometimes, in what we presume to be 
humility, compare ourselves with leaves; but we 
have as yet no right to do so. The leaves may 
well scorn the comparison. We who live for 
ourselves, and neither know how to use nor keep 
the work of past time, may humbly learn, — as 
from the ant, foresight, — from the leaf, reverence. 
The power of every great people, as of every 
living tree, depends on its not effacing, but con- 
firming and concluding, the labours of its ances- 
tors. Looking back to the history of nations, 
we may date the beginning of their decline from 
the moment when they ceased to be reverent in 
heart, and accumulative in hand and brain; 
from the moment when the redundant fruit of 
age hid in them the hollowness of heart, whence 
the simplicities of custom and sinews of tradi- 
tion had withered away. Had men but guarded 
the righteous laws, and protected the precious 
works of their fathers, with half the industry 
they have given to change and to ravage, they 
would not now have been seeking vainly, in 
millennial visions and mechanic servitudes, the 



14 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

accomplishment of the promise made to them 
so long ago : " As the days of a tree are the days 
of my people, and mine elect shall long enjoy the 
work of their hands; they shall not labour in vain, 
nor bring forth for trouble; for they are the seed 
of the blessed of the Lord, and their offspring 
with them." 

This lesson we have to take from the leaf's 
life. One more we may receive from its death. 
If ever, in autumn, a pensiveness falls upon us 
as the leaves drift by in their fading, may we not 
wisely look up in hope to their mighty monu- 
ments? Behold how fair, how far prolonged, in 
arch and aisle, the avenues of the valleys; the 
fringes of the hills I So stately, — so eternal; 
the joy of man, the comfort of all living creatures, 
the glory of the earth, — they are but the monu- 
ments of those poor leaves that flit faintly past 
us to die. Let them not pass, without our un- 
derstanding their last counsel and example: that 
we also, careless of monmnent by the grave, may 
build it in the world — monument by which men 
may be taught to remember, not where we died, 
but where we lived. 



MYSTERY AND UNITY. 

This system of braided or woven ornament 
was not confined to the Arabs; it is universally 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 1$ 

pleasing to the instinct of mankind. 1 believe 
that nearly all early ornamentation is full of it, — 
more especially, perhaps, Scandinavian and An- 
glo-Saxon; and illuminated manuscripts depend 
upon it for their loveliest effects of intricate 
colour, up to the close of the thirteenth century. 
There are several very interesting metaphysical 
reasons for this strange and unfailing delight, 
felt in a thing so simple. It is not often that any 
idea of utility has power to enhance the true im- 
pressions of beauty; but it is possible that the 
enormous importance of the art of weaving to 
mankind may give some interest, if not actual 
attractiveness, to any type or image of the inven- 
tion to which we owe, at once, our comfort and 
our pride. But the more profound reason lies in 
the innate love of mystery and unity; in the joy 
';hat the human mind has in contemplating any 
kind of maze or entanglement, so long as it can 
discern through its confusion, any guiding clue 
or connecting plan: a pleasure increased and 
solemnized by some dim feeling of the setting 
forth, by such symbols, of the intricacy, and al- 
ternate rise and fall, subjection and supremacy, 
Vf human fortune; the 

"Weave the warp, and weave the woof," 
of Fate and Time. 



1 6 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS, 



IMPERFECTION. 

Imperfection is in some sort essential to all 
■that we know of life. It is the sign of life in a 
mortal body, that is to say, of a state of progress 
and change. Nothing that lives is, or can b^ 
rigidly perfect; part of it is decaying, part na, 
scent. The foxglove blossom, — a third part bud, 
a third part past, a third part in full bloom, — 
is a type of the life of this world. And in all 
things that live there are certain irregularities 
and deficiencies which are not only signs of life, 
but sources of beauty. No human face is exact- 
ly the same in its lines on each side, no leaf per- 
fect in its lobes, no branch in its symmetry. All 
admit irregularity as they imply change; and to 
banish imperfection is to destroy expression, to 
check exertion, to paralyse vitality. All things 
are literally better, lovelier, and more beloved for 
the imperfections which have been divinely ap- 
pointed, that the law of human life may be Effort, 
and the law of human judgment, Mercy. 



SUBLIMITY. 

Impressions of awe and sorrow being at the 
root of the sensation of sublimity, and the beauty 
of separate flowers not being of the kind which 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 1 7 

connects itself with such sensation, there is a 
wide distinction, in general, between flower-lov- 
ing minds and minds of the highest order. 



THE HUMBLEST OF THE EARTH-CHILDREN. 

Lichen, and mosses (though these last in thei? 
luxuriance are deep and rich as herbage, yet both 
for the most part humblest of the green things 
that live), — how of these? Meek creatures! the 
first mercy of the earth, veiling with hushed 
softness its dintless rocks; creatures full of pity, 
covering with strange and tender honour the 
scarred disgrace of ruin, — laying quiet finger on 
the trembling stones, to teach them rest. No 
words, that I know of, will say what these mosses 
are. None are delicate enough, none perfect 
enough, none rich enough. How is one to tell 
of the rounded bosses of furred and beaming 
green, — the starred divisions of rubied bloom, 
fine-filmed, as if the Rock Spirits could spin 
porphyry as we do glass, — the traceries of intri- 
cate silver, and fringes of amber, lustrous, arbo- 
rescent, burnished through every fibre into fitful 
brightness and glossy traverses of silken change, 
yet all subdued and pensive, and framed for 
simplest, sweetest offices of grace. They will 



l8 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

not be gathered, like the flowers, for chaplet or 
love-token; but of these the wild bird will make 
its nest, and the wearied child his pillow. 

And, as the earth's first mercy, so they are its 
last gift to us. When all other service is vain, 
from plant and tree, the soft mosses and gray 
lichen take up their watch by the headstone. 
The woods, the blossoms, • the gift-bearing 
grasses, have done their parts for a time, but 
these do service for ever. Trees for the builder's 
yard, flowers for the bride's chamber, corn for 
the granary, moss for the grave. 

Yet as in one sense the humblest, in another 
they are the most honoured of the earth-children. 
Unfading, as motionless, the worm frets them 
not, and the autumn wastes not. Strong in 
lowliness, they neither blanch in heat nor pine 
in frost. To them slow-fingered, constant- 
hearted, is entrusted the weaving of the dark, 
eternal, tapestries of the hills; to them, slow- 
pencilled, iris-dyed, the tender framing of their 
endless imagery. Sharing the stillness of the 
unimpassioned rock, they share also its endur- 
ance; and while the winds of departing spring 
scatter the white hawthorn blossom like drifted 
snow, and summer dims on the parched meadow 
the drooping of its cowslip-gold, — far above, 
among the mountains, the silver lichen spots 
rest, star-like on the stone, and the gathering 



PA'ECIOUS THOUGHTS. 1 9 

orange-Stain upon the edge of yonder western 
peak, reflects the sunsets of a thousand years. 



JUDGMENT, MERCY, AND TRUTH. 

When people read," the law came by Moses, 
but grace and truth by Christ," do they suppose 
that the law was ungracious and untrue? The 
law was given for a foundation; the grace (or 
mercy) and truth for fulfilment; — the whole 
forming one glorious Trinity of judgment, mercy, 
and truth. And if people would but read the 
text of their Bibles with heartier purpose of un- 
derstanding it, instead of superstitiously, they 
would see that throughout the parts which they 
are intended to make most personally their own 
(the Psalms) it is always the Law which is 
spoken of with chief joy. The Psalms respect- 
ing mercy are often sorrowful, as in thought of 
what it cost; but those respecting the law are 
always full of delight. David cannot contain 
himself for joy in thinking of it, — he is never 
weary of its praise: — " How love I thy law! it is 
my meditation all the day. Thy testimonies 
are my delight and my counsellors; sweeter, also, 
than honey and the honeycomb." 



20 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

DOERS. 

Men in their several professed employments, 
looked at broadly, may be properly arranged 
under five classes: — 

1. Persons who see. These in modem lan- 
guage are sometimes called sight-seers, that be- 
ing an occupation coming more and more into 
vogue every day. Anciently they used to be 
called, simply, seers. 

2. Persons who talk. These, in modern lan- 
guage, are usually called talkers, or speakers, as 
in the House of Commons, and elsewhere. They 
used to be called prophets. 

3. Persons who make. These, in modern lan- 
guage, are usually called manufacturers. An- 
ciently they were called poets. 

4. Persons who think. There seems to be no 
very distinct modern title for this kind of per- 
son, anciently called philosophers; nevertheless 
we have a few of them among us. 

Of the first two classes I have only this to 
note, — that we ought neither to say that a person 
sees, if he sees falsely, nor speaks, if he speaks 
falsely. For seeing falsely is worse than blind- 
ness, and speaking falsely, than silence. A man 
who is too dim-sighted to discern the road from 
the ditch, may feel which is which; — but if the 
ditch appears manifestly to him to be the road. 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 21 

and the road to be the ditch, what sliall l^ecome 
of him? False seeing is unseeing, — on the nega- 
tive side of blindness; and f:ilse speaking, un- 
speaking, — on the negative side of silence. 

To the persons who think, also, the same test 
applies very shrewdly. Theirs is a dangerous 
profession; and from the |^time of the Aristoph- 
anes thought-shop to the great German estab- 
lishment, or thought-manufactory, whose pro- 
ductions have, unhappily, taken in part the place 
of the older and more serviceable commodities 
of Nuremberg toys and Berlin wool, it has been 
often harmful enough to mankind. It should 
not be so, for a false thought is more distinctly 
and visibly no thought than a false saying is no 
saying. But it is touching the two great produc- 
tive classes of the doers and makers, that we 
have one or two important points to note here. 

Has the reader ever considered, carefully, 
what is the meaning of the word " doing"? 
When, accidentally or mechanically, events take 
place without a purpose, we have indeed effects 
or results, and agents or causes, but neither deeds 
nor doers. 

Now it so happens, as we all well know, that 
by far the largest part of things happening in 
practical life are brought about with no deliber- 
ate purpose. There are always a number of 
people who have the nature of stones; they fall 



22 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

on other persons and crush them. Some again 
have the nature of weeds, and twist about other 
people's feet and entangle them. More have the 
nature of logs, and lie in the way, so that every- 
one falls over them. And most of all have the 
nature of thorns, and set themselves by waysides, 
so that every passer-by must be torn, and all 
good seed choked; or perhaps make wonderful 
crackling under various pots, even to the extent 
of practically boiling water and working pistons. 
All these people produce immense and sorrowful 
effect in the world. Yet none of them are 
doers: it is their nature to crush, impede, and 
prick: but deed is not in them.* 

And farther, observe, that even when some 
effect is finally intended, you cannot call it the 
person's deed, unless it is what he intended. 

If an ignorant person, purposing evil, acci- 
dentally does good (as if a thief's disturbing a 
family should lead them to discover in time that 
their house was on fire); or vice versa if an igno- 
rant person intending good, accidentally does evil 

* We may, perhaps, expediently recollect as much of 
our botany as to teach us that there may be sharp and 
rough persons, like spines, who yet have good in them, 
and are essentially branches, and can bud. But the true 
thorny person is no spine, only an excrescence; rootless 
evermore, — leafless evermore. No crown made of such 
can ever meet glory of Angel's hand. (In Memoriam, 
Ixviii.) 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 25 

(as if a child should give hemlock to his com- 
panions for celery), in neither case do you call 
them the doers of what may result. So that in 
order to a true deed, it is necessary that the 
effect of it should be foreseen. Which, ulti- 
mately, it cannot be, but by a person who knows, 
and in his deed obeys, the laws of the universe, 
and of its Maker. And this knowledge is in its 
highest form, respecting the will of the Ruling 
Spirit, called Trust. For it is not the knowl- 
edge that a thing is, but that, according to the 
promise and nature of the Ruling Spirit, a thing 
will be. Also obedience in its highest form is 
not obedience to a constant and compulsory law, 
but a persuaded or voluntary yielded obedience 
to an issued command. 

And because in His doing always certain, and 
in His speaking always true. His name who leads 
the armies of Heaven is ''' Faithful and True," 
and all deeds which are done in alliance with 
those armies, be they small or great, are essen- 
tially deeds oi faith ^ which therefore, and in this 
one stern, eternal sense, subdues all kingdoms, 
and turns to flight the armies of the aliens, and 
is at once the source and substance of all human 
deed, rightly so-called. 

What, let us ask next, is the ruling character 
of the person who produces — the creator or 
maker, anciently called the poet? 



24 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

We have seen what a deed is. What then is a 
" creation "? Nay, it may be replied, to " create " 
cannot be said of man's labour. 

On the contrary, it not only can be said, but 
is and must be said continually. You certainly 
do not talk of creating a watch, or creating a 
shoe; nevertheless you do talk of creating a feel- 
ing. Why is this? 

Look back to the greatest of all creation, that 
of the world. Suppose the trees had been ever 
so well or so ingeniously put together, stem and 
leaf, yet if they had not been able to grow, 
would they have been well created? Or suppose 
the fish had been cut and stitched finely out of 
skin and whalebone; yet, cast upon the waters, 
had not been able to swim? Or suppose Adam 
and Eve had been made in the softest clay, ever 
so neatly, and set at the foot of the tree of 
knowledge, fastened up to it, quite unable to 
fall, or do anything else, would they have been 
well created, or in any true sense created at all? 

It will, perhaps, appear to you, after a little 
farther thought, that to create anything in reality 
is to put life into it. 

A poet, or creator, is therefore a person who 
puts things together, not as a watchmaker steel, 
or a shoemaker leather, but who puts life into 
them. 

His work is essentially tJiis: it is the gathering 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 2$ 

and arranging of material by imagination, so as 
to have in it at last the harmony or helpfulness 
of life, and the passion or emotion of life. Mere 
fitting and adjustment of material is nothing; 
that is watchmaking. But helpful and passion- 
ate harmony, essentially choral harmony, so- 
called from the Greek word "rejoicing," is the 
harmony of Apollo and the Muses; the word 
Muse and Mother being derived from the same 
root, meaning " passionate seeking," or love, of 
which the issue is passionate finding, or sacred 
INVENTION. For which reason I could not bear 
to use any baser word than this of invention. 
And if the reader will think over all these 
things, and follow them out, as I think he may 
easily with this much of clue given him, he will 
not any more think it wrong in me to place in- 
vention so high among the powers of man, 
or any more think it strange that the 'Mast act 
of the life of Socrates should have been to purify 
himself from the sin of having negligently lis- 
tened to the voice within him, which, through all 
his past life, had bid him labour, and make 
harmony." 



THE HELPFUL, OR THE HOLY ONE. 

When matter is either consistent, or living, we 
call it pure, or clean; when inconsistent, or cor- 



26 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

rupting (unhelpful), we call it impure, or unclean. 
The greatest uncleanliness being that which is 
essentially most opposite to life. 

Life and consistency, then, both expressing 
one character (namely, helpfulness, of a higher 
or lower order), the Maker of all creatures and 
things, "by whom all creatures live, and all 
things consist," is essentially and for ever the 
Helpful One, or in softer Saxon, the " Holy" 
One. 

The word has no other ultimate meaning: 
Helpful, harmless, undefiled: " living" or " Lord 
of Life." 

The idea is clear and mighty in the cherubim's 
cry: " Helpful, helpful, helpful. Lord God of 
Hosts;" i.e. of all the hosts, armies, and creatures 
of the earth. 

A pure or holy state of anything, therefore, is 
that in which all its parts are helpful or consist- 
ent. They may or may not be homogeneous. 
The highest or organic purities are composed 
of many elements in an entirely helpful state. 
The highest and first law of the universe — and 
the other name of life, is, therefore, "help." 
The other name of death is "separation." 
Government and co-operation are in all things 
and eternally the laws of life. Anarchy and 
competition eternally, and in all things, the laws 
of death. 



PRECIOUS TJIOLGHTS. 2 J 



ST. MARK. 

" And so Barnabas took Mark, and sailed unto 
Cyprus." If as the shores of Asia lessened upon 
his sight, the spirit of prophecy had entered into 
the heart of the weak disciple who had turned 
back when his hand was on the plough, and who 
had been judged, by the chiefest of Christ's 
captains, unworthy thenceforward to go forth 
with him to the work,* how wonderful would he 
have thought it, that by the lion symbol in 
future ages he was to be represented among 
men! how woful, that the war-cry of his name 
should so often reanimate the rage of the soldier, 
on those very plains where he himself had failed 
in the courage of the Christian, and so often dye 
with fruitless blood that very Cypriot Sea, over 
whose waves, in repentance and shame, he was 
following the Son of Consolation! 



THE MYSTERY OF CLEARNESS. 

In an Italian twilight, when, sixty or eighty 
miles away, the ridge of the Western Alps rises 
in its dark and serrated blue against the crystal- 
line vermilion, there is still unsearchableness, but 



* Acts xiii. 13; XV. 38, 39. 



28 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

an unsearchableness without cloud or conceal- 
ment, — an infinite unknown, but no sense of any 
veil or interference between us and it: we are 
separated from it not by any anger or storm, 
not by any vain and fading vapour, but only by 
the deep infinity of the thing itself. I find that 
the great religious painters rejoiced in that kind 
of unknowableness, and in that only; and I feel 
that even if they had had all the power to do so, 
still they would not have put rosy mists and 
blue shadows behind their sacred figures, but 
only the far-away sky and cloudless mountains. 
Probably the right conclusion is that the clear 
and cloudy mysteries are alike noble; but that 
the beauty of the wreaths of frost mist, folded 
over banks of greensward deep in dew, and 
of the purple clouds of evening, and the wreaths 
of fitful vapour gliding through groves of pine, 
and irised around the pillars of waterfalls, is 
more or less typical of the kind of joy which we 
should take in the imperfect knowledge granted 
to the earthly life, while the serene and cloudless 
mysteries set forth that belonging to the re- 
deemed life. 



PARTIAL KNOWLEDGE. 

Our happiness as thinking beings must depend 
on our being content to accept only partial 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 29 

knowledge, even in those matters which chiefly 
concern us. If we insist upon perfect intelligi- 
bility and complete declaration in every moral 
subject, we shall instantly fall into misery of un- 
belief. Our whole happiness and power of en- 
ergetic action depend upon our being able to 
breathe and live in the cloud; content to see it 
opening here and closing there; rejoicing to 
catch, through the thinnest films of it, glimpses 
of stable and substantial things; but yet per- 
ceiving a nobleness even in the concealment, 
and rejoicing that the kindly veil is spread where 
the untempered light might have scorched us, 
or the infinite clearness wearied. 



JUST CRITICISM. 

Men have commonly more pleasure in the 
criticism which hurts than in that which is in- 
nocuous, and are more tolerant of the severity 
which breaks hearts and ruins fortunes, than of 
that which falls impotently on the grave. 

And thus well says the good and deep-minded 
Richard Hooker: " To the best and wisest, 
while they live, the world is continually a 
froward opposite; and a curious observer of 
their defects and imperfections, their virtues 
afterwards it as much admireth. And for this 



30 rRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

cause, many times that which deserveth admira- 
tion would hardly be able to find favour, if they 
which propose it were not content to profess 
themselves therein scholars and followers of the 
ancient. For the world will not endure to hear 
that we are wiser than any have been which 
went before." — Book v. ch. vii. 3. He therefore 
who would maintain the cause of contemporary 
excellence against that of elder time, must have 
almost every class of men arrayed against him. 
The generous, because they would not find mat- 
ter of accusation against established dignities; 
the envious, because they like not the sound of 
a living man's praise; the wise, because they 
prefer the opinion of centuries to that of days; 
and the foolish, because they are incapable of 
forming an opinion of their own. Obloquy so 
universal is not lightly to be risked, and the few 
who make an effort to stem the torrent, as it is 
made commonly in favour of th^ir own works, 
deserve the contempt which is their only reward. 



THE NEBUCHADNEZZAR CURSE. 

Though God " hath made everything beauti- 
ful in his time, also he hath set the world in 
their heart, so that no man can find out the 
work that God maketh from the beginning to 
the end." 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 31 

This Nebuchadnezzar curse, that sends us to 
grass like oxen, seems to follow but too closely 
on the excess or continuance of national power 
and peace. In the perplexities of nations, in 
their struggles for existence, in their infancy, 
their impotence, or even their disorganization, 
they have higher hopes and nobler passions. 
Out of the suffering comes the serious mind; out 
of the salvation, the grateful heart; out of the 
endurance, the fortitude; out of the deliver- 
ance, the faith; but now when they have learned 
to live under providence of laws, and with 
decency and justice of regard for each other; 
and when they have done away with violent and 
external sources of suffering, worse evils seem 
arising out of their rest, evils that vex less and 
mortify more, that suck the blood though they 
do not shed it, and ossify the heart though they 
do not torture it. 



m 



OPPRESSION OF THE POOR. 

You cannot but have noticed how often 
those parts of the Bible which are likely to be 
oftenest opened when people look for guidance, 
comfort, or help in the affairs of daily life, 
namely, the Psalms and Proverbs, mention is 
made of the guilt attaching to the 0[^prcssion of 



32 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

the poor. Observe: not the neglect of them, 
but the Oppression of them; the word is as fre- 
quent as it is strange. You can hardly open 
either of those books, but somewhere in their 
pages you will find a description of the wicked 
man's attempts against the poor, such as — " He 
doth ravish the poor when he getteth him into 
his net." 

" His mouth is full of deceit and fraud; in 
the secret places doth he murder the innocent." 

" They are corrupt, and speak wickedly con- 
cerning oppression." 

" Their poison is like the poison of a serpent. 
Ye weigh the violence of your hands in the 
earth." 

Yes: " Ye weigh the violence of your hands;" 
weigh these words as well. The last things we 
usually think of weighing are Bible words. We 
like to dream and dispute over them, but to 
weigh them and see what their true contents are 
— anything but that! Yet weigh them; for I 
have purposely taken these verses, perhaps more 
strikingly to you read in this connexion, than 
separately in their places out of the Psalms, be- 
cause, for all people belonging to the Estab- 
lished Church of this country these Psalms are 
appointed lessons, portioned out to them by their 
clergy to be read once through every month. Pre- 
sumably, therefore, whatever portions of Scrip- 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 33 

ture we may pass by or forget, these, at all 
events, must be brought continually to our ob- 
servance as useful for direction of daily life. 
Now, do we ever ask ourselves what the real 
meaning of these passages may be, and who 
these wicked people are, who are " murdering 
the innocent"? You know it is rather singular 
language this! — rather strong language, we 
might, perhaps, call it — hearing it for the first 
time. Murder! and murder of innocent people!-. 
— nay, even a sort of cannibalism. Eating peo- 
ple, — yes, and God's people, too — eating My 
people as if they were bread! swords drawn, 
bows bent, poison of serpents mixed! violence 
of hands weighed, measured, and trafficked with 
as so much coin! where is all this going on? 
Do you suppose it was only going on in the time 
of David, and that nobody but Jews ever mur- 
der the poor? If so, it would surely be wiser 
not to mutter and mumble for our daily lessons 
what does not concern us; but if there be any 
chance that it may concern us, and if this de- 
scription, in the Psalms, of human guilt is at all 
generally applicable, as the descriptions in the 
Psalms of human sorrow are, may it not be ad- 
visable to know wherein this guilt is being com- 
mitted round about us, or by ourselves? and 
when we take the words of the Bible into out 
mouths in a congregational way, to be sure 



34 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

whether we mean sincerely to chant a piece of 
melodious poetry relating to other people (we 
know not exactly whom) — or to assert our be- 
lief in facts bearing somewhat astringently on 
ourselves and our daily business. And if you 
make up your minds to do this no longer, and 
take pains to examine into the matter, you will 
find that these strange words, occurring as they 
do, not in a few places only, but almost in every 
alternate psalm, and every alternate chapter of 
Proverbs or prophecy, with tremendous reitera- 
tion, were not written for one nation or one 
time only, but for all nations and languages, for 
all places and all centuries; and it is as true of 
the wicked man now as ever it was of Nabal or 
Dives, that "his eyes are set against the poor." 



WHO ARE THE POOR? 

May we not advisedly look into this matter a 
little, and ask, ^ho are the poor? 

No country is, or ever will be, without them: 
that is to say, without the class which cannot, 
on the average, do more by its labour than pro- 
vide for its subsistence, and which has no ac- 
cumulations of property laid by on any consid- 
erable scale. Now there are a certain number 
of this class whom we cannot oppress with much 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 35 

severity. An able-bodied and intelligent work- 
man — sober, honest, and industrious, will almost 
always command a fair price for his work, and 
lay by enough in a few years to enable him to 
hold his own in the labour market. But all men 
are not able-bodied, nor intelligent, nor indus- 
trious; and you cannot expect them to be. 
Nothing appears to me at once more ludicrous 
and more melancholy than the way the people 
of the present age usually talk about the morals 
of labourers. You hardly ever address a labour- 
ing man upon his prospects in life, without 
quietly assuming that he is to possess, at start- 
ing, as a small moral capital to begin with, the 
virtue of Socrates, the philosophy of Plato, and 
the heroism of Epaminondas. " Be assured, my 
good man," — you say to him, — " that if you 
work steadily for ten hours a day all your life 
long, and if you drink nothing but water, or the 
very mildest beer, and live on very plain food, 
and never lose your temper, and go to church 
every Sunday, and always remai^j content in the 
position in which Providence has placed you, 
and never grumble, nor swear, and always keep 
your clothes decent, and rise early, and use 
every opportunity of improving yourself, you 
will get on very well, and never come to the par- 
ish." 

All this is exceedingly true; but before giving 



36 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

the advice so confidently, it would be well if we 
sometimes tried it practically ourselves, and 
spent a year or so at some hard manual labour, not 
of an entertaining kind — ploughing or digging, 
for instance, with a very moderate allowance of 
beer; nothing but bread and cheese for dinner; 
no papers nor muffins in the morning; no sofas 
nor magazines at night; one small room for 
parlour and kitchen; and a large family of chil- 
dren always in the middle of the floor. If we 
think we could, under these circumstances, en- 
act Socrates or Epaminondas entirely to our 
own satisfaction, we shall be somewhat justified 
in requiring the same behaviour from our poorer 
neighbours; but if not, we should surely consider 
whether among the various forms of oppression 
of the poor, we may not rank as one of the first 
and likeliest — the oppression of expecting too 
much from them. 

But there will always be some in the world 
who are not altogether intelligent and exem- 
plary, and occasionally drunk on Saturday night, 
and who like sleep on Sunday morning better 
than prayers, and of unnatural parents who send 
their children out to beg instead of to go to 
school. 

Now these are the kind of people whom you 
can oppress, and whom you do oppress, and that 
to purpose, — and with all the more cruelty and 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 37 

the greater sting, because it is just their own 
fault that puts them into your power. You 
know the words about wicked people are, " He 
doth ravish the poor when he getteth him into 
his net'' This getting into the net is constantly 
the fault or folly of the sufferer — his own heed- 
lessness or his own indolence; but after he is 
once in the net, the oppression of him, and mak- 
ing the most of his distress, are ours. The nets 
which we use against the poor are just those 
worldly embarrassments which either their igno- 
rance or their improvidence are almost certain 
at some time or other to bring them into: then, 
just at the time when we ought to hasten to help 
them, and disentangle them, and teach them 
how to manage better in future, we rush forward 
to pillage them, and force all we can out of them 
in their adversity. For, to take one instance 
only, remember this is literally and simply what 
we do, whenever we buy, or try to buy, cheap 
goods — goods offered at a price which we know 
cannot be remunerative for the labour involved 
in them. Whenever we buy such goods, remem- 
ber we are stealing somebody's labour. Don't 
let us mince the matter. I say, in plain Saxon, 
STEALING — taking from him the proper reward 
of his work, and putting it into our own pocket. 
You know well enough that the thing could not 
have been offered you at that price, unless dis- 



38 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

tress of some kind had forced the producer to 
part with it. You take advantage of this dis- 
tress, and you force as much out of him as you 
can under the circumstances. The old barons 
of the middle ages used, in general, the thumb- 
screw to extort property; we moderns, hunger 
or domestic affliction, but the fact of extortion 
remains precisely the same. Whether we force 
the man's property by pinching his stomach or 
pinching his fingers, makes some difference an- 
atomically; morally, none whatever. We use a 
form of torture of some sort in order to make 
him give up his property. 



MERCANTILE PANICS. 

No merchant deserving the name ought to be 
more liable to a " panic" than a soldier should; 
for his name should never be on more paper than 
he could at any instant meet the call of, happen 
what will. I do not say this without feeling at 
the same time how difficult it is to mark, in ex- 
isting commerce, the just limits between the 
spirit of enterprise and of speculation. Some- 
thing of the same temper which makes the Eng- 
lish soldier do always all that is possible, and 
attempt more than is possible, joins its influence 
with that of mere avarice in tempting the Eng- 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 39 

lish merchant into risks which he cannot justify, 
and elTorts which he cannot sustain; and the 
same passion for adventure which our travellers 
gratify every summer on perilous snow wreaths, 
and cloud-encompassed precipices, surrounds 
with a romantic fascination the glittering of a 
hollow investment, and gilds the clouds that 
curl round gulfs of ruin. Nay, a higher and a 
more serious feeling frequently mingles in the 
motley temptation; and men apply themselves 
to the task of growing rich, as to a labour of 
providential appointment, from which they can- 
not pause without culpability, nor retire without 
dishonour. Our large trading cities bear to me 
very nearly the aspect of monastic establishments 
in which the roar of the mill-wheel and the crane 
takes the place of other devotional music: and 
in which the worship of Mammon and Moloch is 
conducted with a tender reverence and an exact 
propriety: the merchant rising to his Mammon 
matins with the self-denial of an anchorite, and 
expiating the frivolities into which he may be 
beguiled in the course of the day by late attend- 
ance at Mammon vespers. But, with every al- 
lowance that can be made for these conscientious 
and romantic persons, the fact remains the same, 
that by far the greater number of the transac- 
tions which lead to these times of commercial 
embarrassment may be ranged simply under two 



40 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

great heads, — gambling and stealing; and both 
of these in their most culpable form, namely, 
gambling with money which is not ours, and 
stealing from those who trust us. I have some- 
times thought a day might come, when the na- 
tion would perceive that a well-educated man 
who steals a hundred thousand pounds, involving 
the entire means of subsistence of a hundred 
families, deserves, on the whole, as severe a pun- 
ishment as an ill-educated man who steals zS 
purse from a pocket, or a mug from a pantry. 



DIVINE LAWS. 

I am very sure that no reader who has given 
any attention to the tendency of what I have 
written, will suppose me to underrate the impor- 
tance, or dispute the authority, of law. It has 
been necessary for me to allege these again and 
again, nor can they ever be too often or too en- 
ergetically alleged, against the vast masses of 
men who now disturb or retard the advance of 
civilisation; heady and high-minded, despisers 
of discipline, and refusers of correction. But 
law, so far as it can be reduced to form and sys- 
tem, and is not written upon the heart, — as it is, 
in a Divine loyalty, upon the hearts of the great 
hierarchies who serve and wait about the throne 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 4I 

of the Eternal Lawgiver, — this lower and formal- 
ly expressible law has, I say, two objects. It is 
either for the definition and restraint of sin, or 
the guidance of simplicity; it either explains, 
forbids, and punishes wickedness, or it guides 
the movements and actions both of lifeless things 
and of the more simple and untaught among re- 
sponsible agents. And so long, therefore, as sin 
and foolishness are in the world, so long it will 
be necessary for men to submit themselves pain- , 
fully to this lower law, in proportion to their 
need of being corrected, and to the degree of 
childishness or simplicity by which they approach 
more nearly to the condition of the unthinking 
and inanimate things which are governed by law 
altogether; yet yielding, in the manner of their 
submission to it, a singular lesson to the pride of 
man, — being obedient more perfectly in propor- 
tion to their greatness. But, so far as men be- 
come good and wise, and rise above the state of 
children, so far they become emancipated from 
this written law, and invested with the perfect 
freedom which consists in the fulness and joyful- 
ness of compliance with a higher aixi unwritten 
law; a law so universal, so subtle, so glorious, 
that nothing but the heart can keep it. 

Now pride opposes itself to the observance of 
this Divine law in two opposite ways: either by 
brute resistance, which is the way of the rabble 



42 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

and its leaders, denying or defying law altogether, 
or by formal compliance, which is the way of the 
Pharisee, — exalting himself while he pretends to 
obedience, and making void the infinite and 
spiritual commandment by the finite and lettered 
commandment. And it is easy to know which 
law we are obeying: for any law which we mag- 
nify and keep through pride, is always the law of 
the letter; but that which we love and keep 
through humility, is the law of the Spirit. And 
the letter killeth, but the Spirit giveth life. 



THE CHURCH. 

The Church is a body to be taught and fed, 
not to teach and feed: and of all sheep that are 
fed on the earth, Christ's Sheep are the most 
simple (the children of this generation are wiser): 
always losing themselves; doing little else in this 
world but lose themselves; — never finding them- 
selves; always found by Some One else; getting 
perpetually into sloughs, and snows, and bramble 
thickets, like to die there, but for their Shepherd, 
who is for ever finding them and bearing them 
back, with torn fleeces and eyes full of fear. 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS, 43 



CLERGYMEN. 

As to the mode in which the officers of the 
Church should be elected or appointed, I do not 
feel it my business to say anything at present, 
nor much respecting the extent of their author- 
ity, either over each other or over the congrega- 
tion, this being a most difficult question, the 
right solution of which evidently lies between 
two most dangerous extremes — insubordination 
and radicalism on one hand, and ecclesiastical 
tyranny and heresy on the other: of the two, in- 
subordination is far the least to be dreaded — for 
this reason, that nearly all real Christians are 
more on the watch against their pride than their 
indolence, and would sooner obey their clergy- 
man, if possible, than contend with him; while 
the very pride they suppose conquered often re- 
turns masked, and causes them to make a merit 
of their humility and their abstract obedience, 
however unreasonable: but they cannot so easily 
persuade themselves there is a merit in abstract 
df/Vobedience. 



THE KING S MESSENGERS. 

The word ambassador has a peculiar ambigu- 
ity about it, owing to its use in modern political 



44 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

affairs; and these clergymen assume that the 
word, as used by St. Paul, means an Ambassador 
Plenipotentiary; representative of his King, and 
capable of acting for his King. What right have 
they to assume that St. Paul meant this? St. 
Paul never uses the word ambassador at all. He 
says, simply, " We are in embassage from Christ; 
and Christ beseeches you through us." Most 
true. And let it further be granted, that every 
word that the clergyman speaks is literally dic- 
tated to him by Christ; that he can make no 
mistake in delivering his message; and that, 
therefore, it is indeed Christ Himself who speaks 
to us the word of life through the messenger's 
lips. Does, therefore, the messenger represent 
Christ? Does the channel which conveys the 
waters of the Fountain represent the Fountain 
itself ? Suppose, when we went to draw water at 
a cistern, that all at once the Leaden Spout 
should become animated, and open its mouth and 
say to us. See, I am Vicarious for the Fountain, 
Whatever respect you ^how to the Fountain 
show some part of it to me. Should we not an 
swer the Spout, and say. Spout, you were set 
there for our service, and may be taken away 
and thrown aside if anything goes wrong with 
you. But the Fountain will flow for ever. 

Observe, I do not deny a most solemn au- 
thority vested in every Christian messenger from 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 45 

God to men. I am prepared to grant this to the 
uttermost; and all that George Herbert says, in 
the end of the Church-porch, I would enforce, 
at another time than this, to the uttermost. 
But the Authority is simply that of a King's 
messe7igerj not of a King's Representative. 
There is a wide difference; all the difference 
between humble service and blasphemous usur- 
pation. 



ILLUSTRATIONS FROM THE BIBLE. 

You are not philosophers of the kind who 
suppose that the Bible is a superannuated book; 
neither are you of those who think the Bible is 
dishonoured by being referred to for judgment in 
small matters. The very divinity of the Book 
seems to me, on the contrary, to justify us in 
referring every thing to it, with respect to which 
any conclusion can be gathered from its pages. 
Assuming then that the Bible is neither super- 
annuated now, nor ever likely to be so, it will 
follow that the illustrations which the Bible 
employs are likely to be clear and i7itelligible il- 
lustrations to the end of time. I do not mean 
that everything spoken of in the Bible histories 
must continue to endure for all time, but that 
the things which the Bible uses for illustration 



4^ PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

of eternal truths are likely to remain eternally- 
intelligible illustrations. 



THE DISSECTORS AND THE DREAMERS. 

All experience goes to teach us, that among 
men of average intellect the most useful mem- 
bers of society are the dissectors, not the 
dreamers. It is not that they love nature or 
beauty less, but that they love result, effect, and 
progress more; and when we glance broadly 
along the starry crowd of benefactors to the 
human race, and guides of human thought, we 
shall find that this dreaming love of natural 
beauty — or at least its expression — has been 
more or less checked by them all, and subor- 
dinated either to hard work or watching of 
human nature. 



ASSOCIATIONS OF BEAUTY. 

Beauty has been appointed by the Deity to 
be one of the elements by which the human soul 
is continually sustained; it is therefore to be 
found more or less in all natural objects, but in 
order that we may not satiate ourselves with it, 
and weary of it, it is rarely granted to us in its 
utmost degrees. When we see it in those ut- 



PRFXIOUS THOUGHTS. 47 

most degrees, we are attracted to it strongly, 
and remember it long, as in the case of singular- 
ly beautiful scenery, or a beautiful countenance. 
On the other hand, absolute ugliness is ad- 
mitted as rarely as perfect beauty; but degrees 
of it more or less distinct are associated with 
whatever has the nature of death and sin, just 
as beauty is associated with what has the nature 
of virtue and of life. 



RESPECTABILITY OF ARTISTS. 

I believe that there is no chance of art's truly 
flourishing in any country, until you make it a 
simple and plain business, providing its masters 
with an easy competence, but rarely with any- 
thing more. And I say this, not because I 
despise the great painter, but because I honour 
him; and I should no more think of adding to 
his respectability or happiness by giving him 
riches, than, if Shakespeare or Milton were alive, 
I should think we added to their respectability, 
or were likely to get better work from them, by 
making them millionaires. 



OPINIONS. 

In many matters of opinion, our first and last 
coincide, though on different grounds; it is the 



48 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

middle stage which is farthest from the truth. 
Childhood often holds a truth with its feeble 
fingers, which the grasp of manhood cannot re- 
tain, — which it is the pride of utmost age to 
recover. 



! THE NECESSITY OF WORK. 

By far the greater part of the suffering and 
crime which exist at this moment in civilized 
Europe, arises simply from people not under- 
standing this truism — not knowing that produce 
or wealth is eternally connected by the laws of 
heaven and earth with resolute labour; but hop- 
ing in some way to cheat or abrogate this ever- 
lasting law of life, and to feed where they have 
not furrowed, and be warm where they have not 
woven. 

I repeat, nearly all our misery and crime re- 
sult from this one misapprehension. The law 
of nature is, that a certain quantity of work is 
necessary to produce a certain quantity of good, 
of any kind whatever. If you want knowledge, 
you must toil for it: if food, you must toil for 
it; and if pleasure, you must toil for it. But men 
do not acknowledge this law, or strive to evade 
it, hoping to get their knowledge, and food, and 
pleasure for nothing; and in this effort they 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 49 

either fail of getting them, and remain ignorant 
and miserable, or they obtain them by making 
other men work for their benefit; and then they 
are tyrants and robbers. Yes, and worse than 
robbers. I am not one who in the least doubts 
or disputes the progress of this century in many 
things useful to mankind; but it seems to me a 
very dark sign respecting us that we look with 
so much indifference upon dishonesty and cru- 
elty in the pursuit of wealth. In the dream 
of Nebuchadnezzar it was only the feet that 
were part of iron and part of clay; but many of 
us are now getting so cruel in our avarice, that 
it seems as if, in us, the heart were part of iron, 
and part of clay. 



WAR. 

Wherever there is war, there 7nust be injustice 
on one [side or the other, or on both. There 
have been wars which were little more than trials 
of strength between friendly nations, and in 
which the injustice was not to each other, but 
to the God who gave them life. But in a malig- 
nant war of these present ages there is injustice 
of ignobler kind, at once to God and man, which 
7nust be stemmed for both their sakes. It may, 
indeed, be so involved with national prejudices. 



50 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS, 

or ignorances, that neither of the contending 
nations can conceive it as attaching to their 
cause; nay, the constitution of their govern- 
ments, and the clumsy crookedness of their polit- 
ical dealings with each other, may be such as 
to prevent either of them from knowing the act- 
ual cause for which they have gone to war. 

For the cause of this quarrel is no dim, half- 
avoidable involution of mean interests and er- 
rors, as some would have us believe. There 
never was a great war caused by such things. 
There never can be. The historian may trace 
it, with ingenious trifling, to a courtier's jest or 
a woman's glance; but he does not ask — (and it 
is the sum of questions) — how the warring 
nations had come to found their destinies on the 
course of the sneer, or the smile. If they have 
so based them, it is time for them to learn, 
through suffering, how to build on other founda- 
tions; — for great, accumulated, and most right- 
eous cause, their foot slides in due time; and 
against the torpor, or the turpitude, of their 
myriads, there is loosed the haste of the devour- 
ing sword and the thirsty arrow. 

But it is not altogether thus: we have not 
been cast into this war by mere political misap- 
prehensions, or popular ignorances. It is quite 
possible that neither we nor our rulers may 
clearly understand the nature of the conflict; 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 5 I 

and that we may be dealing blows in the dark, 
confusedly, and as a soldier suddenly awakened 
from slumber by an unknown adversary. But I 
believe the struggle was inevitable, and that the 
sooner it came, the more easily it was to be met, 
and the more nobly concluded. 



THE ADVANTAGES OF WAR. 

I believe that war is at present productive of 
good more than of evil. I will not argue this 
hardly and coldly, as I might, by tracing in past 
history some of the abundant evidence that na- 
tions have always reached their highest virtue, 
and wrought their most accomplished works, in 
times of straitening and battle; as, on the other 
hand, no nation ever yet enjoyed a protracted 
and triumphant peace without receiving in its 
own bosom ineradicable seeds of future decline. 
I will not so argue this matter; but I will appeal 
at once to the testimony of those whom the war 
has cost the dearest. I know what would be 
told me, by those who have suffered nothing; 
whose domestic happiness has been unbroken, 
whose daily comfort undisturbed; whose experi- 
ence of calamity consists, at its utmost, in the 
incertitude of a speculation, the dearness of a 
luxury, or the increase of demands upon their 



5? PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

fortune which they could meet fourfold without 
inconvenience. 

They are bound by new fidelities to all that 
they have saved, — by new love to all for whom 
they have suffered; every affection which seemed 
to sink with those dim life-stains into the dust, 
has been delegated, by those who need it no 
more, to the cause for which they have expired; 
and every mouldering arm, which will never 
more embrace the beloved ones, has bequeathed 
to them its strength and its faithfulness. 



MEN OF GROSS MINDS. 

During the last age lived certain men of high 
intellect who had no love of nature whatever. 
They do not appear ever to have received the 
smallest sensation of ocular delight from any- 
natural scene, but would have lived happily all 
their lives in drawing-rooms or studies. And, 
therefore, in these men we shall be able to de- 
termine, with the greatest chance of accuracy, 
what the real influence of natural beauty is, and 
what the character of a mind destitute of its 
love. Take, as conspicuous instances, Le Sage 
and Smollett, and you will find, in meditating 
over their works, that they are utterly incapable 
of conceiving a human soul as endov/ed with 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 53 

any nobleness whatever; their heroes are simply 
beasts endowed with some degree of human in- 
tellect; — cunning, false, passionate, reckless, un- 
grateful, and abominable, incapable of noble joy, 
of noble sorrow, of any spiritual perception or 
hope. I said, "beasts with human intellect;" 
but neither Gil Bias nor Roderick Random 
reach, morally, anything near the level of dogs. 



PEDESTRIANS. 

To any person who has all his senses about 
him, a quiet walk along not more than ten or 
twelve miles of road a day, is the most amusing 
of all travelling; and all travelling becomes dull 
in exact proportion to its rapidity. Going by 
railroad I do not consider as travelling at all; it 
is merely " being sent " to a place, and very lit- 
tle different from becoming a parcel; the next 
step to it would of course be telegraphic trans- 
port, of which, however, I suppose it has been 
truly said by Octave Feuillet, 
*^ II y aurait des gens assez betes pour trouver 5aamusant." 



WEALTH. 



Wealth is simply one of the greatest powers 
which can be entrusted to human hands: a 



54 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

power, not indeed to be envied, because it sel- 
dom makes us happy; but still less to be abdi- 
cated or despised: while, in these days, and in 
this country, it has become a power all the more 
notable, in that the possessions of a rich man 
are not represented, as they used to be, by 
wedges of gold or coffers of jewels, but by masses 
of men variously employed, over whose bodies 
and minds the wealth, according to its direction, 
exercises harmful or helpful influence, and 
becomes, in that alternative, Mammon either 
of Unrighteousness or of Righteousness. 



LABOR IN LITTLE THINGS. 

We have no right at once to pronounce our- 
selves the wisest people because We like to do 
all things in the best way. There are many lit- 
tle things which to do admirably is to waste 
both time and cost; and the real question is not 
so much whether we have done a given thing as 
well as possible, as whether we have turned a 
given quantity of labour to the best account. 



THE MEMORY OF UNKINDNESS. 

He who has once stood beside the grave, to 
look back upon the companionship which has 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 55 

been forever closed, feeling how impotent there 
are the wild love, or the keen sorrow, to give 
one instant's pleasure to the pulseless heart, or 
atone in the lowest measure to the departed 
spirit for the hour of unkindness, will scarcely 
ior the future incur that debt to the heart, 
which can only be discharged to the dust. 



DARK SIGNS OF THE TIMES. 

Indeed it is woful, when the young usurp the 
place, or despise the wisdom, of the aged; and 
among the many dark signs of these times, the 
disobedience and insolence of youth are among 
the darkest. But with whom is the fault? 
Youth never yet lost its modesty where age had 
not lost its honour; nor did childhood ever refuse 
its reverence, except where age had forgotten 
correction. The cry, " Go up thou bald head," 
will never be heard in the land which remem- 
bers the precept, " See that ye despise not one 
of these little ones;" and although indeed youth 
may become despicable, when its eager hope is 
changed into presumption, and its progressive 
power into arrested pride, there is something 
more despicable still, in the old age which has 
learned neither judgment nor gentleness, which 
is weak without charity, and cold without dis- 
cretion. 



56 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 



VULGAR FRACTIONS. 

* If you will not amuse, nor inform, nor help 
anybody; you will not amuse, nor better, nor 
inform yourselves; you will sink into a state in 
which you can neither show, nor feel, nor see, 
anything, but that one is to two as three is to 
six. And in that state what should we call our- 
selves? Men? I think not. The right name 
for us would be — numerators and denominators. 
Vulgar Fractions. 

May we not accept this great principle — that, 
as our bodies, to be in health, must be generally 
exercised, so our minds, to be in health, must 
be generally cultivated ? You would not call a 
man healthy who had strong arms but was para- 
lytic in his feet; nor one who could walk well, 
but had no use of his hands; nor one who could 
see well, if he could not hear. You would not 
voluntarily reduce your bodies to any such par- 
tially developed state. Much more, then, you 
would not, if you could help it, reduce your 
minds to it. Now, your minds are endowed 
with a vast number of gifts of totally different 
uses — limbs of mind as it were, which, if you 
don't exercise, you cripple. One is curiosity; 
that is a gift, a capacity of pleasure in knowing; 
which if you destroy, you make yourselves cold 
and dull. Another is sympathy; the power of 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. S7 

sharing in the feelings of living creatures; which 
if you destroy, you make yourselves hard and 
cruel. Another of your limbs of mind is admira- 
tion; the power of enjoying beauty or ingenuity; 
which if you destroy, you make yourselves base 
and irreverent. Another is wit; or the power 
of playing with the lights on the many sides of 
truth; which if you destroy, you make your- 
selves gloomy, and less useful and cheering to 
others than you might be. So that in choosing 
your way of work it should be your aim, as far 
as possible, to bring out all these faculties, as 
far as they exist in you; not one merely, nor 
another, but all of them. And the way to bring 
them out, is simply to concern yourselves at- 
tentively with the subjects of each faculty. To 
cultivate sympathy you must be among living 
creatures, and thinking about them; and to cul- 
tivate admiration, you must be among beautiful 
things and looking ai them. 



LOVE OF NATURE. 

Though the absence of the love of nature is 
not an assured condemnation, its presence is an 
invariable sign of goodness of heart and justness 
of m.ox2\ perception, though by no means of moral 
practice; that in proportion to the degree in 



58 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

which it is felt, will probably be the degree in 
which all nobleness and beauty of character will 
also be felt; that when it is originally absent 
from any mind, that mind is in many other re- 
spects hard, worldly, and degraded; that where, 
having been originally present, it is repressed by 
art or education, that repression appears to have 
been detrimental to the person suffering it; and 
that wherever the feeling exists, it acts for good 
on the character to which it belongs, though, as 
it may often belong to characters weak in other 
respects, it may carelessly be mistaken for a 
source of evil in them. 



MODERN EDUCATION. 

What do you suppose was the substance of 
good education, the education of a knight, in 
the middle ages? What was taught to a boy as 
soon as he was able to learn anything? First, 
to keep under his body, and bring it into subjec- 
tion and perfect strength; then to take Christ 
for his captain, to live as always in his presence 
and, finally, to do his devoir — mark the word — 
to all men? Now, consider first, the difference 
in their influence over the armies of France, 
between the ancient word " devoir," and modern 
word " gloire." And, again, ask yourselves what 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 59 

you expect your own children to be taught at 
your great schools and universities. Is it Chris- 
tian history, or the histories of Pan and Silenus? 
Your present education, to all intents and pur- 
poses, denies Christ, and that is intensely and 
peculiarly modernism. 

Or, again, what do you suppose was the pro- 
claimed and understood principle of all Chris- 
tian govermnents in the middle ages? I do not 
say it was a principle acted up to, or that the 
cunning and violence of wicked men had not 
too often their full sway then, as now; but on 
what principles were that cunning and violence, 
so far as was possible, restrained? By the con- 
fessed fear of God, and confessed authority of His 
law. You will find that all treaties, laws, trans- 
actions whatsoever, in the middle ages, are 
based on a confession of Christianity as the 
leading rule of life; that a text of Scripture is 
held, in all public assemblies, strong enough to 
be set against an appearance of expediency; and 
although, in the end, the expediency might 
triumph, yet it was never without a distinct al- 
lowance of Christian principle, as an efficient 
element in the consultation. Whatever error 
might be committed, at least Christ was openly 
confessed. Now what is the custom of your 
British Parliament in these days? You know 
that nothing would excite greater manifestations 



6o PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

of contempt and disgust than the slightest at- 
tempt to introduce the authority of Scripture in 
a political consultation. That is denying Christ. 
It is intensely and peculiarly modernism. 



WANT OF SELF-KNOWLEDGE. 

Half the evil in this world comes from people 
not knowing what they do like, not deliberately 
setting themselves to find out what they really 
enjoy. All people enjoy giving away money, 
for instance: they don't know that^ — they rather 
think they like keeping it; and they do keep it 
under this false impression, often to their great 
discomfort. Everybody likes to do good; but 
not one in a hundred finds this out. 



THE RESPONSIBILITY OF A RICH MAN. 

A rich man ought to be continually examin- 
ing how he may spend his money for the ad- 
vantage of others; at present, others are contin- 
ually plotting how they may beguile him into 
spending it apparently for his own. The aspect 
which he presents to the eyes of the world is 
generally that of a person holding a bag of 
money with a staunch grasp, and resolved to 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 6l 

part with none of it unless he is forced, and all 
the people about him are plotting how they may 
force him; that is to say, how they may persuade 
him that he wants this thing or that; or how 
they may produce things that he will covet and 
buy. One man tries to persuade him that he 
wants perfumes; another that he wants jewel- 
lery; another that he wants sugarplums; an- 
other that he wants roses at Christmas. Any- 
body who can invent a new want for him is 
supposed to be a benefactor to society; and 
thus the energies of the poorer people about 
him are continually directed to the production 
of covetable, instead of serviceable things; and 
the rich man has the general aspect of a fool, 
plotted against by all the world. Whereas the 
real aspect which he ought to have is that of a 
person wiser than others, entrusted with the 
management of a larger quantity of capital, 
which he administers for the profit of all, direct- 
ing each man to the labour which is most 
healthy for him, and most serviceable for the 
community. 



THE WANTS OF MODERN ART. 

We don't want either the life or the decora- 
tions of the thirteenth century back again; and 



62 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

the circumstances with which you must surround 
your workmen are those simply of happy modern 
English life, because the designs you have now 
to ask for from your workmen are such as will 
make modern English life beautiful. All that 
gorgeousness of the middle ages, beautiful as it 
sounds in description, noble as in many respects 
it was in reality, had, nevertheless, for founda- 
tion and for end, nothing but the pride of life — 
the pride of the so-called superior classes; a 
pride which supported itself by violence and 
robbery, and led in the end to the destruction 
both of the arts themselves and the States in 
which they flourished. 

The great lesson of history is, that all the fine 
arts hitherto — having been supported by the 
selfish power of the noblesse, and never having 
extended their range to the comfort or the re- 
lief of the mass of the people — the arts, I say, 
thus practised, and thus matured, have only ac- 
celerated the ruin of the States they adorned; 
and at the moment when, in any kingdom, you 
point to the triumphs of its greatest artists, you 
point also to the determined hour of the king- 
dom's decline. The names of great painters 
are like passing bells; in the name of Velasquez, 
you hear sounded the fall of Spain; in the name 
of Titian, that of Venice; in the name of Leo- 
nardo, that of Milan; in the name of Raphael, 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 63 

that of Rome. And there is profound justice 
in this; for in proportion to the nobleness of the 
power is the guilt of its use for purposes vain or 
vile; and hitherto the greater the art, the more 
surely has it been used, and used solely, for the 
decoration of pride, or the provoking of sensual- 
ity. Another course lies open to us. We may 
abandon the hope — or if you like the words bet- 
ter — we may disdain the temptation, of the 
pomp and grace of Italy in her youth. For us 
there can be no more the throne of marble — 
for us no more the vault of gold — but for us 
there is the loftier and lovelier privilege of bring- 
ing the power and charm of art within the reach 
of the humble and the poor; and as the magnifi- 
cence of past ages failed by its narrowness and 
its pride, ours may prevail and continue, by its 
universality and its lowliness. 

We want now, no more feasts of the gods, nor 
martyrdoms of the saints; we have no need of 
sensuality, no place for superstition, or for 
costly insolence. Let us have learned and 
faithful historical paintings; touching and 
thoughtful representations of human nature in 
dramatic paintings; poetical and familiar render- 
ings of natural objects, and of landscape; and 
rational, deeply-felt realizations of the events 
which are the subjects of our religious faith. 
And let these things we want, as far as possible, 



64 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

be scattered abroad, and made accessible to all 
men. 



MANUAL LABOUR. 

How wide the separation is between original 
and second-hand execution, I shall endeavour to 
show elsewhere; it is not so much to our pur- 
pose here as to mark the other and more fatal 
error of despising manual labour when governed 
by intellect; for it is no less fatal an error to 
despise it when thus regulated by intellect, than 
to value it for its own sake. We are always in 
these days endeavouring to separate the two; we 
want one man to be always thinking, and an- 
other to be always working, and we call one a 
gentleman, and the other an operative; whereas 
the workman ought often to be thinking, and 
the thinker often to be working, and both 
should be gentlemen, in the best sense. As it 
is, we make both ungentle, the one envying, the 
other despising, his brother; and the mass of 
society is made up of morbid thinkers, and mis- 
erable workers. Now it is only by labour that 
thought can be made healthy, and only by 
thought that labour can be made happy, and 
the two cannot be separated with impunity. It 
would be well if all of us were good handicrafts- 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 65 

men in some kind, and the dishonour of manual 
labour done away with altogether; so that 
though there should still be a trenchant distinc- 
tion of race between nobles and .commoners, 
there should not, among the latter, be a trench- 
ant distinction of employment, as between idle 
and working men, or between men of liberal and 
illiberal professions. All professions should be 
liberal, and there should be less pride felt in 
peculiarity of employment, and more in excel- 
lence of achievement. And yet more, in each 
several profession, no master should be too 
proud to do its hardest work. The painter 
should grind his own colours; the architect 
work in the mason's yard with his men; the 
master manufacturer be himself a more skilful 
operative than any man in his mills; and the 
distinction between one man and another be 
only in experience and skill, and the authority 
and wealth which these must naturally and 
iustly abtain. 



PRACTICAL KNOWLEDGE. 



In literary and scientific teaching, the great 
point of economy is to give the discipline of it 
through knowledge which will immediately bear 



66 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS, 

on practical life. Our literary work has long 
been economically useless to us because too 
much concerned with dead languages; and our 
scientific work will yet, for some time, be a good 
deal lost, because scientific men are too fond or 
too vain of their systems, and waste the student's 
time in endeavouring to give him large views, 
and make him perceive interesting connexions 
of facts; when there is not one student, no, nor 
one man, in a thousand, who can feel the beauty 
of a system, or even take it clearly into his head; 
but nearly all men can understand, and most 
will be interested in, the facts which bear on 
daily life. Botanists have discovered some won- 
derful connexion between nettles and figs, which 
a cowboy who will never see a ripe fig in his life 
need not be at all troubled about; but it will be 
interesting to him to know what effect nettles 
have on hay, and what taste they will give to 
porridge; and it will give him nearly a new life 
, if he can be got but once, in a spring-time, to 
look well at the beautiful circlet of the white 
nettle blossom, and work out with his school- 
master the curves of its petals, and the way it is 
set on its central mast. So, the principle of 
chemical equivalents, beautiful as it is, matters 
far less to a peasant boy, and even to most sons 
of gentlemen, than their knowing how to find 
whether the water is wholesome in the back- 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 6/ 

kitchen cistern, or whether the seven-acre field 
wants sand or chalk. 



BASE CRITICISM. 

It may perhaps be said that I attach too much 
importance to the evil of base criticism; but 
those who think so have never rightly under- 
stood its scope, nor the reach of that stern say- 
ing of Johnson's (Idler, No. 3, April 29, 1758): 
" Little does he (who assumes the character of 
a critic) think how many harmless men he in- 
volves in his own guilt, by teaching them to be 
noxious without malignity, and to repeat objec- 
tions which they do not understand." And 
truly, not in this kind only, but in all things 
whatsoever, there is not, to my mind, a more 
wofui or wonderful matter of thought than the 
power of a fool. In the world's affairs there 
is no design so great or good but it will take 
twenty wise men to help it forward a few inches, 
and a single fool can stop it; there is no evil soi 
great or so terrible but that, after a multitude 
of counsellors have taken means to avert it, a 
single fool will bring it down. Pestilence, fam- 
ine, aiid the sword, are given into the fool's 
hand as the arrows into the hand of the giant: 
and if iie wer2 fairly set forth in the right motley, 



6S PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

the web of it should be sackcloth and sable; the 
bells on his cap, passing bells; his badge, a bear 
robbed of her whelps; and his bauble, a sexton's 
spade. 



PUBLIC FAVOUR. 

There is great difficulty in making any short 
or general statement of the difference between 
great and ignoble minds in their behaviour to 
the " public." It is by no means universally the 
case that a mean mind, as stated in the text, will 
bend itself to what you ask of it; on the con- 
trary, there is one kind of mind, the meanest of 
all, which perpetually complains of the public, 
contemplates and proclaims itself as a ** genius," 
refuses all wholesome discipline or humble office, 
and ends in miserable and revengeful ruin; also, 
the greatest minds are marked by nothing more 
distinctly than an inconceivable humility, and 
acceptance of work or instruction in any form, 
and from any quarter. They will learn from 
everybody, and do anything that anybody asks 
of them, so long as it involves only toil, or what 
other men would think degradation. But the 
point of quarrel, nevertheless, assuredly rises 
some day between the public and them, respect- 
ing some matter, not of humiliation, but of Fact. 
Your great man always at last comes to see 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 69 

something the public don't see. This something 
he will assuredly persist in asserting, whether 
with tongue or pencil, to be as he sees it, not as 
they see it; and all the world in a heap on the 
other side, will not get him to say otherwise. 
Then, if the world objects to the saying, he may 
happen to get stoned or burnt for it, but that 
does not in the least matter to him: if the world 
has no particular objection to the saying, he may 
get leave to mutter it to himself till he dies, and be 
merely taken for an idiot; that also does not mat- 
ter to him — mutter it he will, according to what 
he perceives to be fact, and not at all according 
to the roaring of the walls of Red sea on the right 
hand or left of him. Hence the quarrel, sure at 
some time or other, to be started between the 
public and him; while your mean man, though 
he will spit and scratch spiritedly at the public, 
while it does not attend to him, will bow to it 
for its clap in any direction, and say anything 
when he has got its ear, which he thinks will 
bring him another clap; and thus, as stated in 
the text, he and it go on smoothly together. 

There are however, times when the obstinacy 
of the mean man looks very like the obstinacy 
of the great one; but if you look closely into the 
matter, you will always see that the obstinacy of 
the first is in the pronunciation of " I;" and of 
the second, in the pronunciation of " It." 



50 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

POLITICAL ECONOMY. 

A nation's labour, well applied, should be am- 
ply sufficient to provide its whole population 
with good food and comfortable habitation; and 
not with those only, but with good education 
besides, and objects of luxury, art treasures, such 
as these you have around you now. But by 
those same laws of Nature and Providence, if 
the labour of the nation or of the individual be 
misapplied, and much more if it be insufficient, 
— if the nation or man be indolent and unwise, 
— suffering and want result, exactly in propor- 
tion to the indolence and improvidence, — to 
the refusal of labour, or to the misapplication of 
it. Wherever you see want, or misery, or de- 
gradation, in this world about you, there, be 
sure, either industry has been wanting, or indus- 
try has been in error. It is not accident, it is 
not Heaven-commanded calamity, it is not the 
original and inevitable evil of man's nature, 
which fill your streets with lamentation, and your 
graves with prey. It is only that, when there 
should have been providence, there has been 
waste; when there should have been labour, 
there has been lasciviousness; and wilfulness, 
when there should have been subordination.* 



* Proverbs xiii. 23," Much food is in the tillage of the 
i3oor, but there is that is destroyed for want of judgment." 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 71 

" THE church" in THE NEW TESTAMENT. 

The word occurs in the New Testament, one 
hundred and fourteen times. In every one of 
those occurrences, it bears one and the same 
grand sense: that of a congregation or assembly 
of men. But it bears this sense under four dif- 
ferent modifications, giving four separate mean- 
ings to the word. These are — 

I. The entire Multitude of the Elect; other- 
wise called the Body of Christ; and sometimes 
the Bride, the Lamb's Wife; including the Faith- 
ful in all ages; Adam, and the children of Adam, 
yet unborn. 

In this sense it is used in Ephesians v. 25, 27, 
32; Colossians i. 18, and several other passages. 

II. The entire multitude of professing believ- 
ers in Christ, existing on earth at a given mo- 
ment; including false brethren, wolves in sheep's 
clothing, goats, and tares, as well as sheep and 
wheat, and other forms of bad fish with good 
in the net. 

In this sense it is used in i Cor. x. 32; xv. 9; 
Galatians i. 13; i Tim. iii. 5, etc. 

III. The multitude of professed believers, liv- 
ing in a certain city, place, or house. This is 
the most frequent sense in which the word 
occurs, as in Acts vii. 38; xiii. i; i Cor. I 
2; xvi. 19, etc. 



72 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

IV. Any assembly of men: as in Acts xix. 32, 

41. 

That in a hundred and twelve out of the 
hundred and fourteen texts, the word bears 
some one of these four meanings, is indisputable. 
But there are two texts in which, if the word had 
alone occurred, its meaning might have been 
doubtful. These are Matt. xvi. 18, and xviii. 17. 



SPECULATIONS. 

There are some speculations that are fair and 
honest — speculations made with our own money, 
and which do not involve in their success the 
loss, by others, of what we gain. But generally 
modern speculation involves much risk to others, 
with chance of profit only to ourselves: even in 
its best conditions it is merely one of the forms 
of gambling or treasure-hunting; it is either 
leaving the steady plough and the steady pil- 
grimage of life, to look for silver mines beside 
the way; or else it is the full stop beside thei 
dice-tables in Vanity Fair — investing all the 
thoughts and passions of the soul in the fall of 
the cards, and choosing rather the wild accidents 
of idle fortune than the calm and accumulative 
rewards of toil. And this is destructive enough, 
at least to our peace and virtue. But it is 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 73 

usually destructive of far more than our peace, 
or our virtue. Have you ever deliberately set 
yourselves to imagine and measure the suffering, 
the guilt, and the mortality caused necessarily by 
the failure of any large-dealing merchant, or 
largely-branched bank ? Take it at the lowest 
possible supposition — count, at the fewest you 
choosCf the families whose means of support 
have been involved in the catastrophe. Then, 
on the morning after the intelligence of ruin, let 
us go forth amongst them in earnest thought; 
let us use that imagination which we waste 
so often on fictitious sorrow, to measure the 
stern facts of that multitudinous distress; strike 
open the private doors of their chambers, and 
enter silently into the midst of the domestic 
misery; look upon the old men who had reserved 
for their failing strength some remainder of rest 
in the evening-tide of life, cast helplessly back 
into trouble and tumult; look upon the active 
strength of middle age suddenly blasted into 
incapacity — its hopes crushed and its hardly- 
earned rewards snatched away in the same 
instant — at once the heart withered and the 
right arm snapped; look upon the piteous chil- 
dren, delicately nurtured, whose soft eyes, now 
large with wonder at their parents' grief, must 
soon be set in the dimness of famine; and far 
more than all this, look forward to the length of 



74 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

sorrow beyond — to the hardest labour of life now 
to be undergone, either in all the severity of un- 
expected and inexperienced trial, or else, mor^ 
bitter still, to be begun again, and endured for 
the second time, amidst the ruins of cherished 
hopes and the feebleness of advancing years, 
embittered by the continual sting and taunt of 
the inner feeling that it has all been brought 
about, not by the fair course of appointed 
circumstance, but by miserable chance and wan- 
ton treachery; and, last of all, look beyond this 
— to the shattered destinies of those who have 
faltered under the trial, and sunk past recovery 
to despair. And then consider whether the 
hand which has poured this poison into all the 
springs of life be one whit less guiltily red with 
human blood than that which literally pours the 
hemlock into the cup, or guides the dagger 
to the heart? We read with horror of the 
crimes of a Borgia or a Tophana; but there 
never lived Borgias such as live now in the 
midst of us. The cruel lady of Ferrara slew 
only in the strength of passion — she slew only a 
few, those who thwarted her purposes or who 
vexed her soul; she slew sharply and suddenly, 
embittering the fate of her victims with no fore- 
tastes of destruction, no prolongations of pain; 
and, finally and chiefly, she slew, not without 
remorse, nor without pity. But we, in no storm 



PRECIOUS TH0UGH2-S. 75 

of passion — in no blindness of wrath, — we, in 
calm and clear and untempted selfishness, pour 
our poison — not for a few only, but for mul- 
titudes; — not for those who have wronged us, or 
resisted, — but for those who have trusted us and 
aided; — we, not with sudden gift of merciful 
and unconscious death, but with slow waste of 
hunger and weary rack of disappointment and 
despair; — we, last and chiefly, do our murder- 
ing, not with any pauses of pity or scorching of 
conscience, but in facile and forgetful calm of 
mind, — and so, forsooth, read day by day, com- 
placently, as if they meant any one else than 
ourselves, the words that forever describe the 
wicked: " The poison of asps is under their lips, 
and their feet are swift to shed blood." 



BE WHAT NATURE INTENDED. 

Pure history and pure topography are most 
precious things; in many cases more useful 
to the human race than high imaginative work;* 
and assuredly it is intended that a large majority 
of all who are employed in art should never aim 
at anything higher. It is o?ily vanity, never love, 
nor any other noble feeling, which prompts men 
to desert their allegiance to the simple truth, in 
vain pursuit of the imaginative truth which has 



76 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS, 

been appointed to be for evermore sealed to 
them. 

Nor let it be supposed that artists who possess 
minor degrees of imaginative gift need be em- 
barrassed by the doubtful sense of their own 
powers. In general, when the imagination is at 
all noble, it is irresistible, and therefore those 
who can at all resist it ought to resist it. Be a 
plain topographer if you possibly can; if Nature 
meant you to be anything else, she will force 
you to it; but never try to be a prophet; go on 
quietly with your hard camp-work, and the 
spirit will come to you in the camp, as it did to 
Eldad and Medad, if you are appointed to have 
it; but try above all things to be quickly percep- 
tive of the noble spirit in others, and to discern 
in an instant between its true utterance and the 
diseased mimicries of it. In a general way, 
remember it is a far better thing to find out 
other great men, than to become one yourself: 
for you can but become 07ie at best, but you may 
bring others to light in numbers. 



SAILORS SUPERSTITIONS. 



It is one notable effect of a life passed on 
shipboard to destroy weak beliefs in appointed 
forms of religion. A sailor may be grossly super- 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. TJ 

stitious, but his superstitions will be connected 
with amulets and omens, not cast in systems. 
He must accustom himself, if he prays at all, to 
pray anywhere and anyhow. Candlesticks and 
incense not being portable into the maintop, he 
perceives those decorations to be, on the whole, 
inessential to a maintop mass. Sails must be 
set and cables bent, be it never so strict a saint's 
day, and it is found that no harm comes of it. 
Absolution on a lee-shore must be had of the 
breakers, it appears, if at all, and they give it 
plenary and brief, without listening to confes- 
sion. 



SANCTITY OF COLOUR. 

I do not think that there is anything more 
necessary to the progress of European art in the 
present day than the complete understanding of 
this sanctity of Colour. I had much pleasure 
in finding it, the other day, fully understood 
and thus sweetly expressed in a little volume of 
poems by a Miss Maynard: 

"For still in every land, though to Thy name 
Arose no temple, — still in every age, 
Though heedless man had quite forgot Thy praise, 
We praise Thee; and at rise and set of sun 
Did we assemble duly, and intone 



yS PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

A choral hymn that all the lands might hear. 

In heaven, on earth, and in the deep we praised Thee, 

Singly, or mingled in sweet sisterhood. 

But now, acknowledged ministrants, we come, 

Co-worshippers with man in this Thy house. 

We, the Seven Daughters of the Light, to praise 

Thee, Light of Light ! Thee, God of very God !" 

A Dream of Fair Colours. 

These poems seem to be otherwise remarkable 
for a very unobtrusive and pure religious feel- 
ing in subjects connected with art. 



HUMAN ASSOCIATIONS. 

Put the fine dresses and jewelled girdles into 
the best group you can; paint them with all 
Veronese's skill: will they satisfy you? 

Not so. As long as they are in their due 
services and subjection — while their folds are 
formed by the motion of men, and their lustre 
adorns the nobleness of men — so long the lustre 
and the folds are lovely. But cast them from 
the human limbs ; — golden circlet and silken 
tisstre are withered; the dead leaves of autumn 
are more precious than they. 

This is just as true, but in a far deeper sense, 
of the weaving of the natural robe of man's 
souk Fragrant tissue of flowers, golden circlets 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 79 

of clouds, are only fair when they meet the 
fondness of human thoughts, and glorify human, 
visions of heaven. 



THY KINGDOM COME. 

So far as in it lay, this century has caused 
every one of its great men, whose hearts were 
kindest, and whose spirits most perceptive of 
the work of God, to die without hope: — Scott, 
Keats, Byron, Shelley, Turner. Great England, 
of the Iron-heart now, not of the Lion-heart; 
for these souls of her children an account may 
perhaps be one day required of her. 

She has not yet read often enough that old 
story of the Samaritan's mercy. He whom he 
saved was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho 
— to the accursed city (so the old Church used 
to understand it). He should not have left 
Jerusalem; it was his own fault that he went 
out into the desert, and fell among the thieves, 
and was left for dead. Every one of these 
English children, in their day, took the desert 
bypath as he did, and fell among fiends — took 
to making bread out of stones at their bidding, 
and then died, torn and famished; careful Eng- 
land, in her pure, priestly dress, passing by on 



80 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

the other side. So far as we are concerned, 
hat is the account we have to give of them.* 

So far as they are concerned, I do not fear for 
them; — there being one Priest who never passes 
by. The longer I live, the more clearly I see 
how all souls are in His hand — the mean and 
the great. Fallen on the earth in their base- 
ness, or fading as the mist of morning in their 
goodness; still in the hand of the potter as the 
clay, and in the temple of their master as the 
cloud. It was not the mere bodily death that 
He conquered — that death had no sting. It 
was this spiritual death which He conquered, 
so that at last it should be swallowed up — mark 
the word — not in life; but in victory. As the 
dead body shall be raised to life, so also the de- 
feated soul to victory, if only it has been fight- 
ing on its Master's side, has made no covenant 
with death; nor itself bowed its forehead for 
his seal. Blind from the prison-house, maimed 
from the battle, or mad from the tombs, their 
souls shall surely yet sit, astonished, at His feet 
who giveth peace. 

Who giveth peace? Many a peace we have 
made and named for ourselves, but the falsest 

* It is strange that the last words Turner ever attached 
to a picture should have been these : — 

" The priest held the poisoned cup." 
Compare the words of 1798 with those of 1850. 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 8 1 

is in that marvellous thought that we, of all gen- 
erations of the earth, only know the right; and 
that to us, at last, — and us alone, — all the 
schemes of God, about the salvation of men, 
has been shown. " This is the light in which 
W€ are walking. Those vain Greeks are gone 
down to their Persephone for ever — Egypt and 
Assyria, Elam and her multitude, — uncircum- 
cised, their graves are round about them — Pa- 
thros and careless Ethiopia — filled with the 
slain. Rome, with her thirsty sword, and poison 
wine, how did she walk in her darkness! We 
only have no idolatries — ours are the seeing 
eyes; in our pure hands at last, the seven-sealed 
book is laid; to our true tongues entrusted the 
preaching of a perfect gospel. Who shall come 
after us? Is it not peace? The poor Jew, 
Zimri, who slew his master, there is no peace 
for him: but, for us? tiara on head, may we 
not look out of the windows of heaven?" 

Another kind of peace I look for than this, 
though I hear it said of me that I am hope- 
less. 

I am not hopeless, though my hope may be as 
Veronese's: the dark-veiled. 

Veiled, not because sorrowful, but because 
blind. I do not know what my England desires, 
or how long she will choose to do as she is doing 
now; — with her right hand casting away the 



82 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

souls of men, and with her left the gifts of God. 

In the prayers which she dictates to her chil- 
dren, she tells them to fight against the world, the 
flesh, and the devil. Some day, perhaps, it may 
also occur to her as desirable to tell those chil- 
dren what she means by this. What is the world 
which they are to " fight with-" and how does it 
differ from the world which they are to " get on 
in?" The explanation seems to me the more 
needful, because I do not, in the book we pro- 
fess to live by, find anything very distinct about 
fighting with the world. I find something about 
fighting with the rulers of its darkness, and some- 
thing also about overcoming it; but it does not 
follow that this conquest is to be by hostility, 
since evil may be overcome with good. But I 
find it written very distinctly that God loved the 
world, and that Christ is the light of it. 

What the much used words, therefore, mean, 
I cannot tell. But this, I believe, they should 
mean. That there is, indeed, one world which 
is full of care, and desire, and hatred: a world of 
war, of which Christ is not the light, which in- 
deed is without light, and has never heard the 
great " Let there be." Which is, therefore, in 
truth, as yet no world; but chaos, on the face of 
which, moving, the Spirit of God yet causes men 
to hope that a world will come. The better one, 
they call it: perhaps they might, more wisely, 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 8 



call it the real one. Also, I hear them speak 
continually of going to it, rather than of its com- 
ing to them; which, again, is strange, for in that 
prayer which they had straight from the lips of 
the Light of the world, and which He apparent- 
ly thought sufficient prayer for them, there is not 
anything about going to another world; only 
something of another government coming into 
this; or rather, not another, but the only govern- 
ment, — that government which will constitute it 
a world indeed. New heavens and new earth. 
Earth, no more without form and void, but sown 
with fruit of righteousness. Firmament, no 
more of passing cloud, but of cloud risen out of 
the crystal sea — cloud in which, as He was once 
received up, so He shall again come with power, 
and every eye shall see Him, and all kindreds of 
the earth shall wail because of Him. 

Kindreds of the earth, or tribes of it!* — the 
" earth begotten," the Chaos children — children 
of this present world, with its desolate seas and 
its Medusa clouds: the Dragon children, merci- 
less: they who dealt as clouds without water: 
serpent clouds, by whose sight men were turned 
into stone; — the time must surely come for their 
wailing. 

" Thy kingdom come," we are bid to ask then! 



* Compare Matt. xxiv. 30 



84 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

But how shall it come? With power and great 
glory, it is written; and yet not with observation, 
it is also written. Strange kingdom! Yet its 
strangeness is renewed to us with every dawn. 

When the time comes for us to wake out of 
the world's sleep, why should it be otherwise 
than out of the dreams of the night? Singing of 
birds, first, broken and low, as, not to dying 
eyes, but eyes that wake to life, " the casement 
slowly grows a glimmering square;" and then 
the gray, and then the rose of dawn; and last 
the light, whose going forth is to the ends of 
heaven. 

This kingdom it is not in our power to bring; 
but it is, to receive. Nay, it has come already, 
in part; but not received, because men love chaos 
best; and the Night, with her daughters. That 
is still the only question for us, as in the old 
Elias days, " If ye will receive it." With pains 
it may be shut out still from many a dark place 
of cruelty; by sloth it may be still unseen for 
many a glorious hour. But the pain of shutting 
it out must grow greater and greater: — harder, 
every day, that struggle of man with man in the 
abyss, and shorter wages for the fiend's work. 
But it is still at our choice; the simoom-dragon 
may still be served if we will, in the fiery desert, 
or else God walking in the garden, at cool of day. 
Coolness now, not of Hesperus over Atlas, 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 85 

Stooped endurer of toil; but of Heosphorus 
over Sion, the joy of the earth.* The choice is 
no vague or doubtful one. High on the des- 
ert mountain, full descried, sits throned the 
tempter, with his old promise — the kingdoms 
of this world, and the glory of them. He still 
calls you to your labour, as Christ to your rest; 
— labour and sorrow, base desire, and cruel hope. 
So far as you desire to possess, rather than to 
give; so far as you look for power to command, • 
instead of to bless; so far as your own prosperity 
seems to you to issue out of contest or rivalry of 
any kind, with other men, or other nations; so 
long as the hope before you is for supremacy in- 
stead of love; and your desire is to be greatest, 
instead of least; — first, instead of last; — so long 
you are serving the Lord of all that is last, and 
least; — the last enemy that shall be destroyed — 
Death; and you shall have death's crown, with 
the worm coiled in it; and death's wages, with 
the worm feeding on them; kindred of the earth 
shall you yourself become; saying to the grave, 
" Thou art my father;" and to the worm, " Thou 
art my mother, and my sister." 

I leave you to judge, and to choose, between 

* Ps. xlviii, 2. — This joy it is to receive and to give, be- 
cause its officers (governors of its acts) are to be Peace, 
and its exactors (governors of its dealings), Righteousness 
— Is. Ix. 17. 



86 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

this labour, and the bequeathed peace; this 
wages, and the gift of the Morning Star; this 
obedience, and the doing of the will which shall 
enable you to claim another kindred than of the 
earth, and to hear another voice than that of the 
grave, saying, " My brother, and sister, and 
mother." 



VULGARITY. 



There is, indeed, perhaps, no greater sign of 
innate and real vulgarity of mind or defective 
education than the want of power to understand 
the universality of the ideal truth; the absence 
of sympathy with the colossal grasp of those in- 
tellects, which have in them so much of divine, 
that nothing is small to them, and nothing large; 
but with equal and unoffended vision they take 
in the sum of the world, — Straw Street and the 
seventh heavens, — in the same instant. A cer- 
tain portion of this divine spirit is visible even 
in the lower examples of all the true men; it is, 
indeed, perhaps, the clearest test of their be- 
longing to the true and great group, that they 
are continually touching what to the multitude 
appear vulgarities. The higher a man stands, the 
more the word " vulgar" becomes unintelligible 
to him. 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 8/ 

We may dismiss this matter of vulgarity in 
plain and few words, at least as far as regards 
art. There is never vulgarity in a whole truth, 
however commonplace. It may be unimportant 
or painful. It cannot be vulgar. Vulgarity is 
only in concealment of truth, or in affectation. 



SCIENCE. 



The common consent of men proves and ac- 
cepts the proposition, that whatever part of any 
pursuit ministers to the bodily comforts, and 
admits of material uses, is ignoble, and whatso- 
ever part is addressed to the mind only, is noble; 
and that geology does better in reclothing dry 
bones and revealing lost creations, than in trac- 
ing veins of lead and beds of iron; astronomy 
better in opening to us the houses of heaven 
than in teaching navigation; botany better in 
displaying structure than in expressing juices; 
surgery better in investigating organization than 
in setting limbs; only it is ordained that, for 
our encouragement, every step we make in the 
more exalted range of science adds something 
also to its practical applicabilities; that all the 
great phenomena of nature, the knowledge of 
which is desired by the angels only, by us partly, 
as it reveals to farther vision the being and the 



88 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

glory of Him in whom they rejoice and we live, 
dispense yet such kind influences and so much 
of material blessing as to be joyfully felt by all 
inferior creatures, and to be desired by them 
with such single desire as the imperfection of 
their nature may admit; that the strong torrents 
which in their own gladness fill the hills with 
hollow thunder and the vales with winding light, 
have yet their bounden charge of field to feed 
and barge to bear; that ,^he fierce flames to 
which the Alp owes its uphe£t/al and the volcano 
its terror, temper for us the metal vein and 
quickening spring; and that for our incitement, 
I say not our reward, for knowledge is its own 
rev/ard, herbs have their healing, stones their 
preciousness and stars their times. 



INFINITY. 



That which we foolishly call vastness is, 
rightly considered, not more wonderful, not more 
impressive, than that which we insolently call 
littleness, and the infinity of God is not myste- 
rious, it is only unfathomable, not concealed, 
but incomprehensible: it is a clear infinity, the 
darkness of the pure unsearchable sea. 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 89 



NEARNESS AND DISTANCE. 

Are not all natural things, it may be asked, as 
lovely near as far away? Nay, not so. Look at 
the clouds, and watch the delicate sculpture of 
their alabaster sides, and the rounded lustre of 
their magnificent rolling. They are meant to be 
beheld far away; they were shaped for their 
place, high above your head; approach them, 
and they fuse into vague mists, or whirl away in 
fierce fragments of thunderous vapour. Look at 
the crest of the Alp, from the far-away plains 
over which its light is cast, whence human souls 
have communion with it by their myriads. The 
child looks up to it in the dawn, and the hus- 
bandman in the burden and heat of the day, 
and the old man in the going down of the sun, 
and it is to them all as the celestial city on the 
world's horizon; dyed with the depth of heaven, 
and clothed with the calm of eternity. There 
was it set, for holy dominion, by Him who 
marked for the sun his journey, and bade the 
moon know her going down. It was built for its 
place in the far-off sky; approach it, and as the 
sound of the voice of man dies away about its 
foundations, and the tide of human life, shal- 
lowed upon the vast aerial shore, is at last met 
by the Eternal " Here shall thy waves be 
stayed," the glory of its aspect fades into 



90 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

blanched fearfulness; its purple walls are rent 
into grisly rocks, its silver fretwork saddened 
into wasting snow; the storm-brands of ages are 
on its breast, the ashes of its own ruin lie sol- 
emnly on its white raiment. 



NOVELTY. 



** Custom hangs upon us, with a weight 
Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life." 

And if we grow impatient under it, and seek 
to recover the mental energy by more quickly 
repeated and brighter novelty, it is all over with 
our enjoyment. There is no cure for this evil, 
any more than for the weariness of the imagina- 
tion already described, but in patience and rest: 
if we try to obtain perpetual change, change it- 
self will become monotonous: and then we are 
reduced to that old despair, " If water chokes, 
what will you drink after it?" And the two 
points of practical wisdom in this matter are, 
first, to be content with as little novelty as pos- 
sible at a time; and, secondly, to preserve, as 
much as possible in the world, the sources of 
novelty. 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 



EXCITEMENT OF THE IMAGINATION. 

Remember that when the imagination and 
feelings are strongly excited, they will not only 
bear with strange things, but they will look into 
minute things with a delight quite unknown in 
hours of tranquillity. You surely must remem- 
ber moments of your lives in which, under some 
strong excitement of feeling, all the details of 
visible objects presented themselves with a 
strange intensity and insistance, whether you 
would or no; urging themselves upon the mind, 
and thrust upon the eye, with a force of fascina- 
tion which you could not refuse. Now, to a cer- 
tain extent, the senses get into this state when- 
ever the imagination is strongly excited. Things 
trivial at other times assume a dignity or signif- 
icance which we cannot explain; but which is 
only the more attractive because inexplicable: 
and the powers of attention, quickened by the 
feverish excitement, fasten and feed upon the 
minutest circumstances of detail, and remotest 
traces of intention. 



PEACE AND WAR. 



Both peace and war are noble or ignoble ac- 
cording to their kind and occasion. No man 



92 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS, 

has a profounder sense of the horror and guilt 
©f ignoble war than I have. I have personally- 
seen its effects, upon nations, of unmitigated 
evil, on soul and body, with perhaps as much 
pity, and as much bitterness of indignation, as 
any of those whom you will hear continually de- 
claiming in the cause of peace. But peace may 
be sought in two ways. One way is as Gideon 
sought it, when he built his altar in Ophrah, 
naming it, " God sent peace," yet sought this 
peace that he loved, as he was ordered to seek 
it, and the peace was sent, in God's way: — " the 
country was in quietness forty years in the days 
of Gideon." And the other way of seeking 
peace is as Menahem sought it when he gave 
the King of Assyria a thousand talents of silver, 
that "his hand might be with him." That is, 
you may either win your peace, or buy it: — win 
it, by resistance to evil; — buy it, by compromise 
with evil. You may buy your peace, with si- 
lenced consciences; — you may buy it, with bro- 
ken vows, — buy it, with lying words, — buy it, 
with base connivances, — buy it, with the blood 
of the slain, and the cry of the captive, and the 
silence of lost souls — over hemispheres of the 
earth, while you sit smiling at your serene 
hearths, lisping comfortable prayers evening and 
morning, and counting your pretty Protestant 
beads (which are flat, and of gold, instead of 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 93 

round, and of ebony, as the monk's once were), 
and so mutter continually to yourselves, " Peace, 
peace," when there is No peace; but only cap- 
tivity and death, for you, as well as for those you 
leave unsaved; — and yours darker than theirs. 

I cannot utter to you what I would in this 
matter; we all see too dimly, as yet, what our 
great world-duties are, to allow any of us to try 
to outline their enlarging shadows. But think 
over what I have said, and in your quiet homes 
reflect that their peace was not won for you by 
your own hands; but by theirs who long ago 
jeoparded their lives for you, their children; 
and remember that neither this inherited peace, 
nor any other, can be kept, but through the 
same jeopardy. No peace was ever won from 
Fate by subterfuge or agreement; no peace is 
ever in store for any of us, but that which we 
shall win by victory over shame or sin; — victory 
over the sin that oppresses, as well as over that 
which corrupts. For many a year to come, the 
sword of every righteous nation must be whetted 
to save or to subdue; nor will it be by patience of 
others' suffering, but by the offering of your own, 
that you will ever draw nearer to the time when 
the great change shall pass upon the iron of the 
earth; — when men shall beat their swords into 
ploughshares, and their spears into pruning- 
hooks; neither shall they learn war any more. 



94 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

THE PLEASURES OF SIGHT. 

Had it been ordained by the Almighty that 
the highest pleasures of sight should be those of 
most difficult attainment, and that to arrive at 
them it should be necessary to accumulate 
gilded palaces tower over tower, and pile arti- 
ficial mountains around insinuated lakes, there 
would have been a direct contradiction between 
the unselfish duties and inherent desires of 
every individual. But no such contradiction 
exists in the system of Divine Providence, which, 
leaving it open to us, if we will, as creatures in 
probation, to abuse this sense like every other, 
and pamper it with selfish and thoughtless vani- 
ties as we pamper the palate with deadly meats, 
until the appetite of tasteful cruelty is lost in its 
sickened satiety, incapable of pleasure unless, 
Caligula-like, it concentrate the labour of a mil- 
lion of lives into the sensation of an hour, leaves 
it also open to us, by humble and loving ways, 
to make ourselves susceptible of deep delight 
from the meanest objects of creation, and of a 
delight which shall not separate us from our fel- 
lows, nor require the sacrifice of any duty or 
occupation, but which shall bind us closer to 
men and to God, and be with us always, har- 
monized with every action, consistent with every 
claim, unchanging and eternal. 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 95 



PRIDE. 

Pride is base from the necessary foolishness 
of it, because at its best, that is when grounded 
on a just estimation of our own elevation or 
superiority above certain others, it cannot but 
imply that our eyes look downward only, and 
have never been raised above our own measure, 
for there is not the man so lofty in his standing 
nor capacity but he must be humble in thinking 
of the cloud habitation and far sight of the an- 
gelic intelligences above him, and in perceiving 
what infinity there is of things he cannot know 
nor even reach unto, as it stands compared with 
that little body of things he can reach, and of 
which nevertheless he can altogether under- 
stand not one: not to speak of that wicked and 
fond attributing of such excellency as he may 
have to himself, and thinking of it as his own 
getting, which is the real essence and criminality 
of pride, nor of those viler forms of it, founded 
on false estimation of things beneath us and 
irrational contemning of them: but taken at its 
best, it is still base to that degree that there is 
no grandeur of feature which it cannot destroy 
and make despicable. 



9^ PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 



TRUE LIBERTY. 

Wise laws and just restraints are to a noble 
nation not chains, but chain mail — strength and 
defence, though something also of an incum- 
brance. And this necessity of restraint, remem- 
ber, is just as honorable to man as the necessity 
of labour. You hear every day greater numbers 
of foolish people speaking about liberty, as if it 
were such an honourable thing: so far from being 
that, it is, on the whole, and in the broadest 
sense, dishonourable, and an attribute of the 
lower creatures. No human being, however 
great or powerful, was ever so free as a fish. 
There is always something that he must, or 
must not do; while the fish may do whatever he 
likes. All the kingdoms of the world put to- 
gether are not half so large as the sea, and all 
the railroads and wheels that were ever, or will 
be, invented are not so easy as fins. You will 
find, on fairly thinking of it, that it is his Re- 
straint which is honourable to man, not his Lib- 
erty; and, what is more, it is restraint which is 
honourable even in the lower animals. A butter- 
fly is much more free than a bee; but you 
honour the bee more, just because it is subject to 
certain laws which fit it for orderly function in 
bee society. And throughout the world, of the 
two abstract things, liberty and restraint, re- 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 9/ 

straint is always the more honourable. It is true, 
indeed, that in these and all other matters you 
never can reason finally from the abstraction, 
for both liberty and restraint are good when 
they are nobly chosen, and both are bad when 
they are basely chosen; but of the two, I re- 
peat, it is restraint which characterizes the 
higher creature, and betters the lower creature: 
and, from the ministering of the archangel to 
the labour of the insect, — from the poising of the 
planets to the gravitation of a grain of dust, — 
the power and glory of all creatures, and all 
matter, consist in their obedience, not in their 
freedom. The Sun has no liberty — a dead leaf 
has much. The dust of which you are formed 
has no liberty; its liberty will come — with its 
corruption. 



WEAK THINGS MADE STRONG, 

Is not this a strange type, in the very heart 
and height of these mysterious Alps — these 
wrinkled hills in their snowy, cold, gray-haired 
old age, at first so silent, then, as we keep quiet 
at their feet, muttering and whispering to us 
garrulously, in broken and dreaming fits, as it 
were, about their childhood — is it not a strange 
type of the things which "out of weakness are 



98 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

made strong!" If one of those little flakes of 
mica-sand, hurried in tremulous spangling along 
the bottom of the ancient river, too light to sink 
to faint to float, almost too small for sight, could 
have had a mind given to it as it was at last 
borne down with its kindred dust into the 
abysses of the stream, and laid (would it not 
have thought?) for a hopeless eternity in the 
dark ooze, the most despised, forgotten, and 
feeble of all earth's atoms; incapable of any use 
or change; not fit, down there in the diluvial 
darkness, so much as to help an earth-wasp to 
build its nest, or feed the first fibre of a lichen; 
— what would it have thought, had it been told 
that one day, knitted into a strength as of im- 
perishable iron, rustless by the air, infusible by 
the flame, out of the substance of it, with its fel- 
lows, the axe of God should hew that Alpine 
tower; that against //—poor, helpless, mica flake! 
— the wild north winds should rage in vain; be- 
neath //—low-fallen mica flake! — the snowy hills 
should lie bowed like flocks of sheep, and the 
kingdoms of the earth fade away in unregarded 
blue; and around it — weak, wave-drifted mica 
flake! — the great war of the firmament should 
burst in thunder, and yet stir it not; and the 
fiery arrows and angry meteors of the night fall 
blunted back from it into the air; and all the 
stars in the clear heaven should light, one by 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 99 

one as they rose, new cressets upon the points of 
snow that fringed its abiding-place on the im- 
perishable spire! 



THE TRUTH OF TRUTHS. 

Truth is to be discovered, and Pardon to be 
won for every man by himself. This is evident 
from innumerable texts of Scripture, but chiefly 
from those which exhort every man to seek after 
Truth, and which connect knowing with doing. 
We are to seek after knowledge as silver, and 
search for her as for hid treasures; therefore, 
from every man she must be naturally hid, and 
the discovery of her is to be the reward only of 
personal search. The kingdom of God is as 
treasure hid in a field; and of those who profess 
to help us to seek for it, we are not to put con- 
fidence in those who say, — Here is the treasure, 
we have found it, and have it, and will give you 
some of it; but to those who say, — We think 
that is a good place to dig, and you will dig 
most easily in such and such a way. 

Farther, it has been promised that if such 
earnest search be made, Tnith shall be discov- 
ered: as much truth, that is, as is necessary for 
the person seeking. These, therefore, I hold, 
for two fundamental principles of religion, — 



100 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

that, without seeking, truth cannot be known at 
all; and that, by seeking, it may be discovered 
by the simplest. I say, without seeking it can- 
not be known at all. It can neither be declared 
from pulpits, nor set down in Articles, nor in 
any wise " prepared and sold " in packages, 
ready for use. Truth must be ground for every 
man by himself out of its husk, with such help as 
he can get, indeed, but not without stern labour 
of his own. In what science is knowledge to be 
had cheap? or truth to be told over a velvet 
cushion, in half an hour's talk every seventh 
day? Can you learn chemistry so? — zoology? — 
anatomy? and do you expect to penetrate the 
secret of all secrets, and to know that whose 
price is above rubies; and of which the depth 
saith, — It is not in me, in so easy fashion? 
There are doubts in this matter which evil 
spirits darken with their wings, and that is true 
of all such doubts which we were told long ago — 
they can "be ended by action alone." 

As surely as we live, this truth of truths can 
only so be discerned: to those who act on what 
they know, more shall be revealed; and thus, if 
any man will do His will, he shall know the 
doctrine whether it be of God. Any man: — not 
the man who has most means of knowing, who 
has the subtlest brains, or sits under the most 
orthodox preacher, or lias his library fullest of 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. lOI 

most orthodox books — but the man who strives 
to know, who takes God at His word, and sets 
himself to dig up the heavenly mystery, roots 
and all, before sunset, and the night come, when 
no man can work. Beside such a man, God 
stands in more and more visible presence as he 
toils, and teaches him that which no preacher 
can teach — no earthly authority gainsay. By 
such a man, the preacher must himself be 
judged. 



GOD S PLACE IN THE HUMAN HEART. 

Anything which makes religion its second ob- 
ject, makes religion no object. God will put up 
with a great many things in the human heart, 
but there is one thing He will not put up with 
in it — a second place. He who offers God a 
second place, offers Him no place. 



MEMBERS OF THE CHURCH. 

Men not in office in the Church suppose 
themselves, on that ground, in a sort unholy; 
and that, therefore, they may sin with more ex- 
cuse, and be idle or impious with less danger, 
than the Clergy: especially they consider them- 



102 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

selves relieved from all ministerial function, and 
as permitted to devote their whole time and 
energy to the business of this world. No mis- 
take can possibly be greater. Every member of 
the Church is equally bound to the service of 
the Head of the Church; and that service is 
preeminently the saving of souls. There is not 
a moment of a man's active life in which he 
may not be indirectly preaching; and through- 
out a great part of his life he ought to be direct- 
ly preaching, and teaching both strangers and 
friends; his children, his servants, and all who 
in any way are put under him, being given to 
him as especial objects of his ministration. 



DISCERNMENT OF CHRISTIAN CHARACTER. 

If we hear a man profess himself a believer in 
God and in Christ, and detect him in no glaring 
and wilful violation of God's law, we speak of 
him as a Christian; and, on the other hand, if 
we hear him or see him denying Christ, either 
in his words or conduct, we tacitly assume him 
not to be a Christian. A mawkish charity pre- 
vents us from outspeaking in this matter, and 
from earnestly endeavouring to discern who are 
Christians and who are not; and this I hold to 
be one of the chief sins of the Church in the 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. I03 

present day; for thus wicked men are put to no 
shame; and better men are encouraged in theij 
failings, or caused to hesitate in their virtues, by 
the example of those whom, in false charity, 
they choose to call Christians. 



PATRONAGE OF ART. 

As you examine into the career of historical 
painting, you will be more and more struck with 
the fact 1 have stated to you, — that none was 
ever truly great but that which represented the 
living forms and daily deeds of the people among 
whom it arose; — that all precious historical 
work records, not the past but the present. Re- 
member, therefore, that it is not so much in 
buying pictures, as in being pictures, that you 
can encourage a noble school. The best patron- 
age of art is not that which seeks for the pleas- 
ures of sentiment in a vague ideality, nor for 
beauty of form in a marble image; but that 
which educates your children into living heroes, 
and binds down the flights and the fondnesses of 
che heart into practical duty and faithful devo- 
tion. 



COMPANIONSHIP WITH NATURE. 

To the mediaeval knight, from Scottish moor 
to Syrian sand, the world was one great exercise 



104 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

ground, or field of adventure; the staunch pac- 
ing of his charger penetrated the pathlessness 
of outmost forest, and sustained the sultriness 
of the most secret desert. Frequently alone, — 
or, if accompanied, for the most part only by re- 
tainers of lower rank, incapable of entering into 
complete sympathy with any of his thoughts, — 
he must have been compelled often to enter into 
dim companionship with the silent nature around 
him, and must assuredly sometimes have talked 
to the wayside flowers of his love, and to the 
fading clouds of his ambition. 



ALL CARVING AND NO MEAT. 

The divisions of a church are much like the 
divisions of a sermon; they are always right so 
long as they are necessary to edification, and al- 
ways wrong when they are thrust upon the at- 
tention as divisions only. There may be neat- 
ness in carving when there is richness in feast- 
ing; but I have heard many a discourse, and seen 
many a church wall, in which it was all carving 
and no meat. 



THE TRUE CHURCH. 

' The Church which is composed of Faithful 
men, is the one true, indivisible and indiscerni- 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. IO5 

ble Church, built on the foundation of Apostles 
and Prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the 
chief corner-stone. It includes all who have 
Ever fallen asleep in Christ, and all yet unborn, 
who are to be saved in Him; its Body is as yet 
imperfect; it will not be perfected till the last 
saved human spirit is gathered to its God. 

A man becomes a member of this Church only 
by believing in Christ with all his heart; nor is 
he positively recognizable for a member of it, 
when he has become so, by any one but God, 
not even by himself. Nevertheless, there are 
certain signs by which Christ's sheep may be 
guessed at. Not by their being in any definite 
Fold — for many are lost sheep at times: but 
by their sheep-like behaviour; and a great many 
are indeed sheep which, on the far mountain side, 
in their peacefulness, we take for stones. To 
themselves, the best proof of their being Christ's 
sheep is to find themselves on Christ's shoulders; 
and, between them, there are certain sympathies 
(expressed in the Apostles' Creed by the term 
"communion of Saints"), by which they may in 
a sort recognize each other, and so become veri- 
ly visible to each other for mutual comfort. 



I06 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

FLOWERS. 

Flowers seem intended for the solace of ordi- 
nary humanity; children love them; quiet, ten- 
der contented ordinary people love them as they 
grow; luxurious and disorderly people rejoice in 
them gathered: They are the cottager's treasure; 
and in the crowded town, mark, as v/ith a little 
broken fragment of rainbow, the windows of the 
workers in whose heart rests the covenant of 
peace. Passionate or religious minds contem- 
plate them with fond, feverish intensity; the af- 
fection is seen severely calm in the works of 
many old religious painters, and mixed with 
more open and true country sentiment in those 
of our own pre-Raphaelites. To the child and 
the girl, the peasant and the manufacturing op- 
erative, to the grisette and the nun, the lover 
and monk they are precious always. But to the 
men of supreme power and thoughtfulness, pre- 
cious only at times; symbolically and pathetically 
often to the poets, but rarely for their own sake. 
They fall forgotten from the great workmen's 
and soldiers' hands. Such men will take, in 
thankfulness, crowns of leaves, or crowns of 
thorns— not crowns of flowers. 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 10/ 



THE CLOUD-BALANCINGS. 

When the earth had to be prepared for the 
habitation of man, a veil, as it were, of interme- 
diate being was si)read between him and its 
darkness, in which were joined, in a subdued 
measure, the stability and insensibility of the 
earth, and the passion and perishing of man- 
kind. 

But the heavens, also, had to be prepared for 
his habitation. 

Between their burning light, — their deep 
vacuity, and man, as between the earth's gloom 
of iron substance, and man, a veil had to be 
spread of intermediate being; which should ap- 
pease the unendurable glory to the level of hu- 
man feebleness, and sign the changeless motion 
of the heavens with a semblance of human vicis- 
situde. 

Between earth and man arose the leaf. Be- 
tween the heaven and man came the cloud. His 
life being partly as the falling leaf, and partly as 
the flying vapour. 

Has the reader any distinct idea of what clouds 
are? We had some talk about them long ago, 
and perhaps thought their nature, though at that 
time not clear Co us, would be easy enough un- 
derstandable when we put ourselves seriously 



I08 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

to make it out. Shall we begin with one or two 
easiest questions? 

That mist which lies in the morning so softly 
in the valley, level and w^hite, through which the 
tops of the trees rise as if through an inundation 
— why is // so heavy? and why does it lie so low, 
being yet so thin and frail that it will melt away 
utterly into splendour of morning, when the sun 
has shone on it but a few moments more. 
Those colossal pyramids, huge and firm, with 
outlines as of rocks, and strength to bear the 
beating of the high sun full on their fiery flanks 
■ — why are they so light, — their bases high over 
our heads, high over the heads of Alps? why will 
these melt away, not as the sun rises, but as he 
descends, and leave the stars of twilight clear, 
while the valley vapour gains again upon the 
earth like a shroud? 

Or that ghost of a cloud, which steals by 
yonder clump of pines; nay, which does not 
steal by them, but haunts them, wreathing yet 
round them, and yet — and yet, sloAvly: now 
falling in a fair waved line like a woman's veil; 
now fading, now gone: we look away for an 
instant, and look back, and it is again there. 
What has it to do with that clump of pines, that 
it broods by them and weaves itself among their 
branches, to and fro? Has it hidden a cloudy 
treasure among the moss at their roots, which it 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. IO9 

watches thus? Or has some strong enchanter 
charmed it into fond returning, or bound it fast 
within those bars of bough? And yonder filmy 
crescent, bent like an archer's bow above the 
snowy summit, the highest of all the hill, — that 
white arch which never forms but over the 
supreme crest, — how is it stayed there, repelled 
apparently from the snow — nowhere touching it, 
the clear sky seen between it and the mountain 
edge, yet never leaving it — poised as a white 
bird hovers over its nest? 

Or those war-clouds that gather on the hori- 
zon, dragon-crested, tongued with fire; — how is 
their barbed strength bridled? what bits are 
these they are champing with their vapourous 
lips; flinging off flakes of black foam? Leagued 
leviathans of the Sea of Heaven, out of their 
nostrils goeth smoke, and their eyes are like the 
eyelids of the morning. The sword of him that 
layeth at them cannot hold the spear, the dart, 
nor the habergeon. Where ride the captains of 
their armies? Where are set the measures of 
their march? Fierce murmurers, answering each 
other from morning until evening — what rebuke 
is this which has awed them into peace? what 
hand has reined them back by the way by which 
they came? 

I know not if the reader will think at first that 
questions like these are easily answered. So far 



no PRECIOUS TJI OUGHTS. 

from it, I rather believe that some of the mys- 
teries of the clouds never will be understood by 
us at all. " Knowest thou the balancings of the 
clouds?" Is the answer ever to be one of pride? 
" The wondrous works of Him which is perfect 
in knowledge?" Is our knowledge ever to be so? 

It is one of the most discouraging conse- 
quences of the varied character of this work of 
mine, that I am Avholly unable to take note of 
the advance of modern science. What has con- 
clusively been discovered or observed about 
clouds, I know not; but by the chance inquiry 
possible to me I find no book which fairly states 
the difficulties of accounting for even the ordi- 
nary aspects of the sky. I shall, therefore, be 
able in this section to do little more than suggest 
inquiries to the reader, putting the subject in a 
clear form for him. All men accustomed to in- 
vestigation will confirm me in saying that it is a 
great step when we are personally quite certain 
what we do 7iot know. 

First, then, I believe we do not know what 
makes clouds float. Clouds are water, in some 
fine form or another: but water is heavier than 
air, and the finest form you can give a heavy 
thing will not make it float in a light thing. On 
it, yes; as a boat: but i?i it, no. Clouds are not 
boats, nor boat-shaped, and they float in the air, 
not on the top of it. " Nay, but though unlike 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS, III 

boats, may they not be like feathers? If out of 
quill substance there may be constructed eider- 
down, and out of vegetable tissue, thistle-down, 
both buoyant enough for a time, surely of water- 
tissue may be constructed also water-down, 
which will be buoyant enough for all cloudy 
purposes." Not so. Throw out your eider- 
plumage in a calm day, and it will all come 
settling to the ground: slowly indeed, to aspect; 
but practically so fast that all our finest clouds 
would be here in a heap about our ears in 
an hour or two, if they were only made of water 
feathers. " But may they not be quill feathers, 
and have air inside them? May not all their 
particles be minute little balloons?" 

A balloon only floats when the air inside it is 
either specifically, or by heating, lighter than the 
air it floats in. If the cloud-feathers had warm 
air inside their quills, a cloud would be warmer 
than the air about it, which it is not (I believe). 
And if the cloud-feathers had hydrogen inside 
their quills, a cloud would be unwholesome for 
breathing, which it is not — at least so it seems to 
me. 

" But may they not have nothing inside their 
quills?" Then they would rise, as bubbles do 
through water, just as certainly as, if they were 
solid feathers, they would fall. All our clouds 



112 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

would go up to the top of the air, and swim in 
eddies of cloud-foam, 

" But is not that just what they do?" No. 
They float at different heights, and with definite 
forms, in the body of the air itself. If they rose 
like foam, the sky on a cloudy day would look 
like a very large flat glass of champagne seen 
from below, with a stream of bubbles (or clouds) 
going up as fast as they could to a flat foam- 
ceiling. 

" But may they not be just so nicely mixed out 
of some thing and nothing, as to float where they 
are wanted?" 

Yes: that is just what they not only may, but 
must be only this way of mixing something and 
nothing is the very thing I want to explain 
or have explained, and cannot do it, nor get it 
done. 

Except thus far. It is conceivable that mi- 
nute hollow spherical globes might be formed of 
water, in which the enclosed vacuity just bal- 
anced the weight of the enclosing water, and 
that the arched sphere formed by the watery film 
was strong enough to prevent the pressure of the 
atmosphere from breaking it in. Such a globule 
would float like a balloon at the height in the 
atmosphere where the equipoise between the 
vacuum it enclosed, and its own excess of weight 
above that of the air, was exact. It would. 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. II3 

probably, approach its companion globules by 
reciprocal attraction, and form aggregations 
which might be visible. 

This is, I believe, the view usually taken by 
meteorologists I state it as a possibility, to be 
taken into account in examining the question — 
a possibility confirmed by the scriptural words 
which I have taken for the title of this chapter. 

Nevertheless, I state it as a possibility only, 
not seeing how any known operation of physical 
law could explain the formation of such mole- 
cules. This, however, is not the only difficulty. 
Whatever shape the water is thrown into, it 
seems at first improbable that it should lose its 
property of wetness. Minute division of rain, as 
in " Scotch mist," makes it capable of floating 
farther, or floating up and down a little, just as 
dust will float, though pebbles will not; or gold- 
leaf, though a sovereign will not; but minutely 
divided rain wets as much as any other kind, 
whereas a cloud, partially always, sometimes en- 
tirely, loses its power of moistening. Some low 
clouds look, when you are in them, as if they 
were made of specks of dust, like short hairs; 
and these clouds are entirely dry. And also 
many clouds will wet some substances, but 
not others. So that we must grant farther, if we 
are to be happy in our theory, that the spherical 
molecules are held together by an attraction 



114 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

which prevents their adhering to any foreign 
body, or perhaps ceases only under some peculiar 
electric conditions. 

The question remains, even supposing their 
production accounted for, — What intermediate 
states of water may exist between these spherical 
hollow molecules and pure vapour? 

Has the reader ever considered the relations 
of commonest forms of volatile substance? The 
invisible particles which cause the scent of a 
rose-leaf, how minute, how multitudinous, pass- 
ing richly away into the air continually! The 
visible cloud of frankincense — why visible? Is 
it in consequence of the greater quantity, or 
larger size of the particles, and how does the 
heat act in throwing them off in this quantity, 
or of this size? 

Ask the same questions respecting water. It 
dries, that is, becomes volatile, invisibly, at 
(any?) temperature. Snow dries, as water does. 
Under increase of heat, it volatilizes faster, so 
as to become dimly visible in large mass, as a 
heat-haze. It reaches boiling point, then be- 
comes entirely visible. But compress it, so that 
no air shall get between the watery particles — 
it is invisible again. At the first issuing from 
the steam-pipe the steam is transparent; but 
opaque, or visible, as it diffuses itself. The 
water is indeed closer, because cooler, in tha-t 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. II5 

diffusion; but more air is between its particles. 
Then this very question of visibility is an end- 
less one, wavering between form of substance 
and action of light. The clearest (or least visi- 
ble) stream becomes brightly opaque by more 
minute division in its foam, and the clearest 
dew in hoar-frost. Dust, unperceived in shade, 
becomes constantly visible in sunbeam; and 
watery vapour in the atmosphere, which is itself 
opaque, when there is promise of fine weather, 
becomes exquisitely transparent; and (question- 
ably) blue, when it is going to rain. 

Questionably blue: for besides knowing very 
little about water, we know what, except by 
courtesy, must, I think, be called Nothing — 
about air. Is it the watery vapour, or the air it- 
self, which is blue.'* Are neither blue, but only 
white, producing blue when seen over dark 
spaces? If . either blue, or white, why, when 
crimson is their commanded dress, are the most 
distant clouds crimsonest? Clouds close to us 
may be blue, but far off golden, — a strange re- 
sult, if the air is blue. And again, if blue, why 
are rays that come through large spaces of it red; 
and that Alp, or anything else that catches far- 
away light, why coloured red at dawn and sunset? 
No one knows, I believe. It is true that many 
substances, as opal, are blue, or green, by re- 
flected light, yellow by transmitted; but air, if 



1 1 PRE CIO US ■ THO UGHTS. 

blue at all, is blue always by transmitted light. 
I hear of a wonderful solution of nettles, or other 
unlovely herb, which is green when shallow, — 
red when deep. Perhaps some day, as the mo- 
tion of the heavenly bodies by help of an apple, 
their light by help of a nettle,' may be explained 
to mankind. 

But farther: these questions of volatility, and 
visibility, and hue, are all complicated with those 
of shape. How is a cloud outlined? Granted 
whatever you choose to ask, concerning its ma- 
terial, or its aspect, its loftiness and luminous- 
ness, — how of its limitation? What hews it into 
a heap, or spins it into a web? Cold is usually 
shapeless, I suppose, extending over large spaces 
equally, or with gradual diminution. You can- 
not have, in the open air, angles, and wedges, 
and coils, and cliffs of cold. Yet the vapour 
stops suddenly, sharp and steep as a rock, or 
thrusts itself across the gates of heaven in like- 
ness of a brazen bar; or braids itself in and out, 
and across and across, like a tissue of tapestry; 
or falls into ripples, like sand; or into waving 
shreds and tongues, as fire. On what anvils and 
wheels is the vapour pointed, twisted, hammered, 
whirled, as the potter's clay? By what hands is 
the incense of the sea built up into domes of 
marble? 

And, lastly, all these questions respecting sub- 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 11/ 

Stance, and aspect, and shape, and line, and di- 
vision, are involved with others as inscrutable, 
concerning action. The curves in which clouds 
move are unknown; — nay, the very method of 
their motion, or apparent motion, how far it is 
by change of place, how far by appearance in 
one place and vanishing from another. And 
these questions about movement lead partly far 
away into high mathematics, where I cannot 
follow them, and partly into theories concerning 
electricity and infinite space, where I suppose at 
present no one can follow them. 

What, then, is the use of asking the questions? 

For my own part, I enjoy the mystery, and 
perhaps the reader may. I think he ought. He 
should not be less grateful for summer rain, or 
see less beauty in the clouds of morning, because 
they come to prove him with hard questions; to 
which, perhaps, if we look closely at the heav- 
enly scroll,* we may find also a syllable or two 
of answer illuminated here and there. 

* There is a beautiful passage in Sartor Resarttis con- 
cerning this old Hebrew scroll, in its deeper meanings, 
and the child's watching it, though long illegible for him, 
yet " with an eye to the gilding." It signifies in a word 
or two nearly all that is to be said about clouds. 



Il8 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 



FEAR OF DEATH. 

For, exactly in proportion as the pride of 
life became more insolent, the fear of death 
became more servile; and the difference in the 
manner in which the men of early and later 
days adorned the sepulchre, confesses a still 
greater difference in their manner of regard- 
ing death. To those he came as the comforter 
and the friend, rest in his right hand, hope in 
his left; to these as the humiliator, the spoiler, 
and the avenger. And, therefore, we find the 
early tombs at once simple and lovely in adorn- 
ment, severe and solemn in their expression; 
confessing the power, and accepting the peace, 
of death, openly and joyfully; and in all their 
symbols marking that the hope of resurrection 
lay only in Christ's righteousness; signed always 
with this simple utterance of the dead, " I will 
lay me down in peace, and take my rest; for it 
is thou, Lord, only that >makest me dwell in 
safety." But the tombs of the later ages are a 
ghastly struggle of mean pride and miserable 
terror: the one mustering the statues of the Vir- 
tues about the tomb, disguising the sarcophagus 
with delicate sculpture, polishing the false pe- 
riods of the elaborate epitaph, and filling with 
strained animation the features of the portrait 
statue; and the other summoning underneath, 



PRE CIO US THO UGII TS. I 1 9 

out of the niche or from behind the curtain, the 
frowning skull, or scythed skeleton, or some 
other more terrible image of the enemy in whose 
defiance the whiteness of the sepulchre had been 
set to shine above the whiteness of the ashes. 



RECREATION. 

It is one thing to indulge in playful rest, and 
another to be devoted to the pursuit of pleasure: 
and gaiety of heart during the reaction after hard 
labour, and quickened by satisfaction in the ac- 
complished duty or perfected result, is altogether 
compatible with, nay, even in some sort arises 
naturally out of, a deep internal seriousness of 
disposition. 



TYPES. 



I trust that some day the language of Types 
will be more read and understood by us than it 
has been for centuries; and when this language, 
a better one than either Greek or Latin, is again 
recognized amongst us, we shall find, or remem- 
ber, that as the other visible elements of the uni- 
verse — its air, its water, and its flame — set forth, 
in their pure energies, the life-giving, purifying. 



I20 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

and sanctifying influences of the Deity upon His 
creatures, so the earth, in its purity, sets forth 
His eternity and His Truth. I have dwelt 
above on the historical language of stones; let us 
not forget this, which is their theological lan- 
guage; and, as we w^ould not wantonly pollute 
the fresh waters when they issue forth in their 
clear glory from the rock, nor stay the mountain 
winds into pestilential stagnancy, nor mock the 
sunbeams with artificial and ineffective light; so 
let us not by our own base and barren falsehoods, 
replace the crystalline strength and burning col- 
our of the earth from which we were born, and 
to which we must return; the earth which, like 
our own bodies, though dust in its degradation, 
is full of splendour when God's hand gathers its 
atoms; and which was for ever sanctified by Him, 
as the symbol no less of His love than of His 
truth, when He bade the high priest bear the 
names of the Children of Israel on the clear 
stones of the Breastplate of Judgment. 



EXPLAINING NATURE. 



The sea was meant to be irregular! Yes, and 
were not also the leaves, and the blades of grass; 
and, in a sort, as far as may be without mark of 
sin, even the countenance of man? Or would it 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 121 

be pleasanter and better to have us all alike, and 
numbered on our foreheads, that we might be 
known one from the other? 

Is there, then, nothing to be done by man's 
art? Have we only to copy, and again copy, for 
ever, the imagery of the universe? Not so. We 
have work to do upon it; there is not any one 
of us so simple, nor so feeble, but he has work to 
do upon it. But the work is not to improve, but 
to explain. This infinite universe is unfathom- 
able, inconceivable, in its whole; every human 
creature must slowly spell out, and longcontem- 
l)late, such part of it as may be possible for him 
lo reach; then set forth what he has learned of 
it for those beneath him; extricating it from in- 
finity, as one gathers a violet out of grass; one 
does not improve either violet or grass in gather- 
ing it, but one makes the flower visible; and then 
the human being has to make its power upon his 
own heart visible also, and to give it the honour 
of the good thoughts it has raised up in him, and 
to write upon it the history of his own soul. 
And sometimes he may be able to do more than 
this, and to set it in strange lights, and display 
it in a thousand ways before unknown: ways es- 
pecially directed to necessary and noble purposes, 
for which he had to choose instruments out of 
the wide armoury of God. All this he may do: 
and in this he is only doing what every Christian 



122 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

has to do with the written, as well as the created 
word, " rightly dividing the word of truth." Out 
of the infinity of the written word, he has also to 
gather and set forth things new and old, to 
choose them for the season and 'the work that 
are before him, to explain and manifest them to 
others, with such illustration and enforcement as 
maybe in his power, and to crown them with the 
history of what, by them, God has done for his 
soul. And, in doing this, is he improving the 
Word of God? 



THE LOVE OF FLOWERS. 

Perhaps it may be thought, if we understood 
flowers better, we might love them less. 

We do not love them much, as it. is. Few 
people care about flowers. Many, indeed, are 
fond of finding a new shape of blossom, caring 
for it as a child cares about a kaleidoscope. 
Many, also, like a fair service of flowers in the 
greenhouse, as a fair service of plate on the table. 
Many are scientifically interested in them, though 
even these in the nomenclature rather than the 
flowers. And a few enjoy their gardens; but I 
have never heard of apiece of land, which would 
let well on a building lease, remaining unlet be- 
cause it was a flowery piece. I have never 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 1 23 

heard of parks being kept for wild hyacinths, 
though often of their being kept for wild beasts. 
And the blossoming time of the year being prin- 
cipally spring, I perceive it to be the mind of 
most people, during that period, to stay in 
towns. 

A year or two ago, a keen-sighted and eccen- 
trically minded friend of mine, having taken it 
into his head to violate this national custom, 
and go to the Tyrol in spring, was passing 
through a valley near Landech, with several simi- 
larly headstrong companions. A strange moun- 
tain appeared in the distance, belted about its 
breast with a zone of blue, like our English 
Queen. Was it a blue cloud? A blue horizon- 
tal bar of the air that Titian breathed in youth, 
seen now far away, which mortal might never 
breathe again? Was it a mirage — a meteor? 
Would it stay to be approached? (ten miles of 
winding road yet between them and the foot of 
its mountain.) Such questioning had they con- 
cerning it. My keen-sighted friend alone main- 
tained it to be substantial: whatever it might be, 
it was not air, and would not vanish. The ten 
miles of road were overpassed, the carriage left, 
the mountain climbed. It stayed patiently, ex- 
panding still into richer breadth and heavenlier 
glow — a belt of gentians. Such things may ver- 
ily be seen among the Alps in spring, and in 



124 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

spring only. Which being so, I observe most 
people prefer going in autumn. 



THE EARTH-VEIL. 

To dress it and to keep it." 
That, then, was to be our work. Alas! what 
work have we set ourselves upon instead! How 
have we ravaged the garden instead of kept it — 
feeding our war-horses with its flowers, and splin- 
tering its trees into spear-shafts! 

" And at the East a flaming sword." 
Is its flame quenchless? and are those gates 
that keep the way indeed passable no more? or 
is it not rather that we no more desire to enter? 
For what can we conceive of that first Eden 
which we might not yet win back, if we chose? 
It was a place full of flowers, we say. Well: the 
flowers are always striving to grow wherever we 
suffer them; and the fairer, the closer. There 
may indeed have been a Fall of Flowers, as a 
Fall of Man; but assuredly creatures such as we 
are can now fancy nothing lovelier than roses 
and lilies, which would grow for us side by side, 
leaf overlapping leaf, till the Earth was white 
and red with them, if we cared to have it so. 
And Paradise was full of pleasant shades and 
fruitful avenues Well: what hinders us from 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 125 

covering as much of the world as we Hke with 
pleasant shade and pure blossom, and goodly 
fruit? Who forbids its valleys to be covered 
over with corn, till they laugh and sing? Who 
prevents its dark forests, ghostly and uninhabit- 
able, from being changed into infinite orchards, 
wreathing the hills with frail-floretted snow, far 
away to the half-lighted horizon of April, and 
flushing the face of all the autumnal earth with 
glow of clustered food? But Paradise was a 
place of peace, we say, and all the animals were 
gentle servants to us. Well: the world would 
yet be a place of peace if we were all peace- 
makers, and gentle service should we have of its 
creatures if we gave them gentle mastery. But 
so long as we make sport of slaying bird and 
beast, so long as we choose to contend rather 
with our fellows than with our faults, and make 
battle-field of our meadows instead of pasture — 
so long, truly, the Flaming Sword will still turn 
every way, and the gates of Eden remain barred 
close enough, till we have sheathed the sharper 
flame of our own passions, and broken down the 
closer gates of our own hearts. 

I have been led to see and feel this more and 
more, as I considered the service which the 
flowers and trees, which man was at first ap- 
pointed to keep, were intended to render to him 
in return for his care; and the services they still 



126 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

render to him, as far as he allows their influence, 
or fulfils his own task towards them. For what 
infinite wonderfulness there is in this vegetation, 
considered, as indeed it is, as the means by 
which the earth becomes the companion of man 
— his friend and his teacher! In the conditions 
which we have traced in its rocks, there could 
only be seen preparation for his existence; — the 
characters which enable him to live on it safely, 
and to work with it easily — in all these it has 
been inanimate and passive; but vegetation is 
to it as an imperfect soul, given to meet the soul 
of man. The earth in its depths must remain 
dead and cold, incapable except of slow crystal- 
line change; but at its surface, which human be- 
ings look upon and deal with, it ministers to 
them through a veil of strange intermediate be- 
ing; which breathes, but has no voice; moves, 
but cannot leave its appointed place; passes 
through life without consciousness, to death 
without bitterness; wears the beauty of youth, 
without its passion; and declines to the weak- 
ness of age, without its regret. 

And in this mystery of intermediate being, en- 
tirely subordinate to us, with which we can deal 
as we choose, having just the greater power as 
we have the less responsibility for our treatment 
of the unsuffering creature, most of the pleasures 
which we need from the external world are gath- 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 12/ 

ered, and most of the lessons we need are writ- 
ten, all kinds of precious grace and teaching be- 
ing united in this link between the Earth and 
Man: wonderful in universal adaptation to his 
need, desire, and discipline; God's daily prepa- 
ration of the earth for him, with beautiful 
means of life. First a carpet to make it soft for 
him; then, a coloured fantasy of embroidery 
thereon; then, tall spreading of foliage to shade 
him from sun-heat, and shade also the fallen 
rain, that it may not dry quickly back into the 
clouds, but stay to nourish the springs among 
the moss. Stout wood to bear this leafage: 
easily to be cut, yet tough and light, to make 
houses for him, or instruments (lance-shaft, or 
plough-handle, according to his temper); useless 
it had been, if harder; useless, if less fibrous; 
useless, if less elastic. Winter comes, and the 
shade of leafage falls away, to let the sun warm 
the earth; the strong boughs remain, breaking 
the strength of winter winds. The seeds which 
are to prolong the race, innumerable according 
to the need, are made beautiful and palatable, 
varied into infinitude of appeal to the fancy of 
man, or provision for his service; cold juice, or 
glowing spice, or balm, or incense, softening oil, 
preserving resin, medicine of styptic, febrifuge, 
or lulling charm: and all these presented in 
forms of endless change. Fragility or force, 



128 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

softness and strength, in all degrees and aspects; 
unerring uprightness, as of temple pillars, or un- 
divided wandering of feeble tendrils on the 
ground; mighty resistances of rigid arm and 
limb to the storms of ages, or wavings to and fro 
with faintest pulse of summer streamlet. Roots 
cleaving the strength of rock, or binding the 
transience of the sand; crests basking in sun- 
shine of the desert, or hiding by dripping spring 
and lightless cave; foliage far tossing in entan- 
gled fields beneath every wave of ocean — cloth- 
ing with variegated, everlasting films, the peaks 
of the trackless mountains, or ministering at 
cottage doors to every gentlest passion and sim- 
plest joy of humanity. 

Being thus prepared for us in all ways, and 
made beautiful, and good for food, and for build- 
ing, and for instruments of our hands, this race 
of plants, deserving boundless affection and ad- 
miration from us, become, in proportion to their 
obtaining it, a nearly perfect test of our being in 
right temper of mind and way of life; so that no 
one can be far wrong in either who loves the 
trees enough, and every one is assuredly wrong 
in both, who does not love them, if his life has 
brought them in his way. It is clearly possible 
to do without them, for the great companionship 
of the sea and sky are all that sailors need; and 
many a noble heart has been taught the best it 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 1 29 

had to learn between dark stone walls. Still if 
human life be cast among trees at all, the love 
borne to them is a sure test of its purity. And 
it is a sorrowful proof of the mistaken ways of 
the world that the " country," in the simple 
sense of a place of fields and trees, has hitherto 
been the source of reproach to its inhabitants, 
and that the words " countryman, rustic, clown, 
paysan, villager," still signify a rude and un- 
taught person, as opposed to the words " towns- 
man," and " citizen." We accept this usage of 
words, or the evil which it signifies, somewhat 
too quietly; as if it were quite necessary and 
natural that country-people should be rude, and 
towns-people gentle. Whereas I believe that the 
result of each mode of life may, in some stages 
of the world's progress, be the exact reverse; 
and that another use of words may be forced 
upon us by a new aspect of facts, so that we 
may find ourselves saying: " Such and such a 
person is very gentle and kind — he is quite rus- 
tic; and such and such another person is very 
rude and ill-taught — he is quite urbane." 

At all events, cities have hitherto gained the 
better part of their good report through our 
evil ways of going on in the world generally; — 
chiefly and eminently through our bad habit of 
fighting with each other. No field, in the mid- 
dle ages, being safe from devastation, and every 



IjO PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

country lane yielding easier passage to the 
marauders, peacefully-minded men necessarily 
congregated in cities, and walled themselves in, 
making as few cross-country roads as possible: 
while the men who sowed and reaped the har- 
vests of Europe were only the servants or slaves of 
the barons. The disdain of all agricultural pur- 
suits by the nobility, and of all plain facts by the 
monks, kept educated Europe in a state of mind 
over which natural phenomena could have no 
power; body and intellect being lost in the prac- 
tice of war without purpose, and the meditation 
of words without meaning. Men learned the 
dexterity with sword and syllogism, which they 
mistook for education, within cloister and tilt- 
yard; and looked on all the broad space of the 
world of God mainly as a place for exercise of 
horses, or for growth of food. 

There is a beautiful type of this neglect of the 
perfectness of the Earth's beauty, by reason of 
the passions of men, in that picture of Paul 
Uccello's of the battle of Sant' Egidio, in which 
the armies meet on a country road beside a 
hedge of wild roses; the tender red flowers toss- 
ing above the helmets, and glowing between the 
lowered lances. For in like manner the whole 
of Nature only shone hitherto for man between 
the tossing of helmet-crests; and sometimes I 
cannot but think of the trees of the earth as 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. I3I 

capable of a kind of sorrow, in that imperfect 
life of theirs, as they opened their innocent 
leaves in the warm spring-time, in vain for men; 
and all along the dells of England her beeches 
cast their dappled shade only where the outlaw 
drew his bow, and the king rode his careless 
chase; and by the sweet French rivers their long 
ranks of poplar waved in the twilight, only to 
show the flames of burning cities, on the horizon, 
through the tracery of their stems; amidst the 
fair defiles of the Apennines, the twisted olive- 
trunks hid the ambushes of treachery; and on 
their valley meadows, day by day, the lilies 
which were white at the dawn were washed with 
crimson at sunset. 

And indeed I had once purposed, in this work, 
to show what kind of evidence existed respect- 
ing the possible influence of country life on men; 
it seeming to me, then, likely that here and there 
a reader would perceive this to be a grave ques- 
tion, more than most which we contend about, 
political or social, and might care to follow it out 
with me earnestly. 

The day will assuredly come when men will 
see that it is a grave question; at which period, 
also, I doubt not, there will arise persons able 
to investigate it. 



132 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

THE INFLUENCE OF CUSTOM. 

Custom has a twofold operation: the one to 
deaden the frequency and force of repeated im- 
pressions, the other to endear the familiar object 
to the affections. Commonly, where the mind 
is vigorous, and the power of sensation very per- 
fect, it has rather the last operation than the 
first; with meaner minds, the first takes place in 
the higher degree, so that they are commonly 
characterised by a desire of excitement, and 
the want of the loving, fixed, theoretic power. 
But both take place in some degree with all men, 
so that as life advances, impressions of all kinds 
become less rapturous owing to their repetition. 
It is however beneficently ordained that repul- 
siveness shall be diminished by custom in a far 
greater degree than the sensation of beauty, so 
that the anatomist in a little time loses all sense 
of horror in the torn flesh and carious bone, 
while the sculptor ceases not to feel to the close 
of his life, the deliciousness of every line of the 
outward frame. So then as in that with which 
we are made familiar, the repulsiveness is con- 
stantly diminishing, and such claims as it may 
be able to put forth on the affections are daily 
becoming stronger, while in what is submitted 
to us of new or strange, that which may be re- 
pulsive is felt in its full force, while no hold is 



PRECIOUS riiouGiirs. 133 

as yet laid on the affections, there is a very strong 
preference induced in most minds for that to 
which they are accustomed over that they know 
not, and this is strongest in those which are 
least open to sensations of positive beauty. 
But however far this operation may be carried, 
its utmost effect is but the deadening and ap- 
proximating th*i sensations of beauty and ugli- 
ness. It never mixes nor crosses, nor in any way 
alters them; it has not the slightest connexion 
with nor power over their nature. By tasting 
two wines alternately, we may deaden our per- 
ception of their flavour; nay, we may even do 
more than can ever be done in the case of sight, 
we may confound the two flavours together. 
But it will hardly be argued therefore that cus- 
tom is the cause of either flavour. And so, 
though by habit we may deaden the effect of 
ugliness or beauty, it is not for that reason to be 
affirmed that habit is the cause of either sensa 
tion. We may keep a skull beside us as long as 
we please, we may overcome its repulsiveness, 
we may render ourselves capable of perceiving 
many qualities of beauty about its lines, we may 
•contemplate it for years together if we will, it 
and nothing else, but we shall not get ourselves 
to think as well of it as of a child's fair face. 



134 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

DEVELOPMENT. 

I believe an immense gain in the bodily health 
and happiness of the upper classes would follow- 
on their steadily endeavouring, however clumsily, 
to make the physical exertion they now neces- 
sarily take in amusements, definitely serviceable. 
It would be far better, for instance, that a gen- 
tleman should mow his own fields than ride over 
other people's. 

Again, respecting degrees of possible refine- 
ment, I cannot yet speak positively, because no 
effort has yet been made to teach refined habits 
to persons of simple life. 

The idea of such refinement has been made 
to appear absurd, partly by the foolish ambition 
of vulgar persons in low life, but more by the 
worse than foolish assumption, acted on so often 
by modern advocates of improvement, that "edu- 
cation" means teaching Latin, or algebra, or 
music, or drawing, instead of developing or 
" drawing out" the human soul. 

It may not be the least necessary that a peas- 
ant should know algebra, or Greek, or drawing, 
But it may, perhaps, be both possible and expe^ 
dient that he should be able to arrange hia 
thoughts clearly, to speak his own language in- 
telligibly, to discern between right and wrong, 
to govern his passions, and to receive such pleas- 



PRECIOUS 7V/0UGIITS. 135 

iii"es of ear or sight as his life may render ac- 
cessible to him. I would not have him taught 
the science of music; but most assuredly I 
would have him taught to sing. I would not 
teach him the science of drawing; but certainly 
I would teach him to see; without learning a 
single term of botany, he should know accurately 
the habits and uses of every leaf and flower in 
his fields; and unencumbered by any theories of 
moral or political philosophy, he should help his 
neighbour, and disdain a bribe. 



THE REAL USE OF SCIENCE AND ART. 

All effort in social improvement is paralysed, 
because no one has been bold or clear-sighted 
enough to put and press home this radical ques- 
tion: '' What is indeed the noblest tone and 
reach of life for men; and how can the possi- 
bility of it be extended to the greatest num- 
bers?" It is answered broadly and rashly, that 
wealth is good; that knowledge is good; that 
art is good; that luxury is good. Whereas none 
of them are good in the abstract, but good only 
if rightly received. Nor have any steps what- 
ever been yet securely taken, — nor otherwise 
than in the resultless rhapsody of moralists, — 
to ascertain what luxuries and what learning it 



13^ PRECIOUS THOUGHTS, 

is either kind to bestow, or wise to desire. This, 
however, at least we know, shown clearly by the 
history of all time, that the arts and sciences, 
ministering to the pride of nations, have invari- 
ably hastened their ruin; and this, also, without 
venturing to say that I know, I nevertheless 
firmly believe, that the same arts and sciences 
will tend as distinctly to exalt the strength and 
quicken the soul of every nation which employs 
them to increase the comfort of lowly life, and 
grace with happy intelligence the unambitious 
courses of honourable toil. 



THE SYMBOL OF FEAR. 

I might devote half a volume to a description 
of the fantastic and incomprehensible arrange- 
ment of the rocks and their veins; but all 
that is necessary for the general reader to know 
or remember, is this broad fact of the undula- 
tion of their whole substance. For there is 
something, it seems to me, inexpressibly marvel- 
lous in this phenomenon, largely looked at. 
They have nothing of the look of dried earth 
about them, nothing petty or limited in the dis- 
play of their bulk. Where they are, they seem to 
form the world; no mere bank of a river here, 
or of a lane there peeping out among the hedges 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 1 3/ 

or forests: but fro»i the lowest valley to the 
highest clouds, all is theirs — one adamantine 
dominion and rigid authority of rock. We yield 
ourselves to the impression of their eternal, un- 
conquerable stubbornness of strength; their 
mass seems the least yielding, least to be soft- 
ened, or in any wise dealt with by external force, 
of all earthly substance. And, behold, as we 
look farther into it, it is all touched and troubled, 
like waves by a summer breeze; rippled, far 
more delicately than seas or lakes are rippled; 
they only undulate along their surfaces— this 
rock trembles through its every fibre, like the 
chords of an Eolian harp — like the stillest air of 
spring with the echoes of a child's voice. Into 
the heart of all those great mountains, through 
every tossing of their boundless crests, and deep 
beneath all their unfathomable defiles, flows 
that strange quivering of their substance. 
Other and weaker things seem to express their 
subjection to an Infinite power only by momen- 
tary terrors: as the weeds bow down before the 
feverish wind, and the sound of the going in the 
tops of the taller trees passes on before the 
clouds, and the fitful opening of pale spaces on 
the dark water as if some invisible hand were 
casting dust abroad upon it, gives warning of the 
anger that is to come, we may well imagine that 
there is indeed a fear passing upon the grass, 



138 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

and leaves, and waters, at the presence of some 
great spirit commissioned to let the tempest 
loose; but the terror passes, and their sweet rest 
is perpetually restored to the pastures and the 
waves. Not so to the mountains. They, which 
at first seemed strengthened beyond the dread 
of any violence or change, are yet also ordained 
to bear upon them the symbol of a perpetual 
Fear: the tremor which fades from the soft lake 
and gliding river is sealed, to all eternity, upon 
the rock; and while things that pass visibly 
from birth to death may sometimes forget their 
feebleness, the mountains are made to possess a 
perpetual memorial of their infancy, — that in- 
fancy which the prophet saw in his vision: "I 
beheld the earth, and lo, it was without form 
and void, and the heavens, and they had no 
light. I beheld the mountains, and lo, they 
trembled; and all the hills moved lightly'' 



GRADATION. 

There is a marked likeness between the virtue 
of man and the enlightenment of the globe he 
inhabits — the same diminishing gradation in 
vigour up to the limits of their domains, the 
s,ame essential separation from their contraries 
— the same twilight at the meeting of the two: 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 1 39 

a something wider belt than the line where the 
world rolls into night, that strange twilight of 
the virtues; that dusky debateable land, where- 
in zeal becomes impatience, and temperance be- 
comes severity, and justice becomes cruelty, 
and faith superstition, and each and all vanish 
into gloom. 

Nevertheless, with the greater number of 
them, though their dimness increases gradually, 
we may mark the moment of their sunset; and, 
happily, may turn the shadow back by the way 
by which it had gone down: but for one, the 
line of the horizon is irregular and undefined; 
and this, too, the very equator and girdle of 
them all — Truth; that only one of which there 
are no degrees, but breaks and rents continually; 
that pillar of the earth, yet a cloudy pillar; that 
golden and narrow line, which the very powers 
and virtues that lean upon it bend, which policy 
and prudence conceal, which kindness and 
courtesy modify, which courage overshadows 
with his shield, imagination covers with her 
wings, and charity dims with her tears. How 
difficult must the maintenance of that authority 
be, which, while it has to restrain the hostility 
of all the worst principles of man, has also to 
restrain the disorders of his best — which is con- 
tinually assaulted by the one and betrayed by 
the other, and which regards with the same 



HO PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

severity the lightest and the boldest violations 
of its law! 



LOVE AND TRUST. 

My dear friend and teacher, Lowell, right as 
he is in almost everything, is for once wrong in 
these lines, though with a noble wrongness: — 

" Disappointment's dry and bitter root, 
Envy's harsh berries, and the choking pool 
Of the world's scorn, are the right mother-milk 
To the tough hearts that pioneer their kind." 

They are not so; love and trust are the only 
mother-milk of any man's soul. So far as he 
is hated and mistrusted, his powers are de- 
stroyed. Do not think that with impunity you 
can follow the eyeless fool, and shout with the 
shouting charlatan; and that the men you thrust 
aside with gibe and blow, are thus sneered and 
crushed into the best service they can do you. 
I have told you they will not serve you for pay. 
They cannot serve you for scorn. Even from 
Balaam, money-lover though he be, no useful 
prophecy is to be had for silver or gold. From 
Elisha, saviour of life though he be, no saving of 
life — even of children's who "knew no better," 
— is to be got by the cry. Go up, thou bald-head. 
No man can serve you either for purse or curse; 



rRKCIOUS 7^ II OUGHTS. I4I 

neither kind of pay will answer. No pay is, in- 
deed, receivable by any true man; but power is 
receivable by him, in the love and faith you give 
him. So far only as you give him these can he 
serve you; that is the meaning of the question 
which his Master asks always, " Believest thou 
that I am able? " And from every one of His 
servants — to the end of time — if you give them 
the Capernaum measure of faith, you shall have 
from them Capernaum measure of works, and 
no more. 

Do not think that I am irreverently compar- 
ing great and small things. The system of the 
world is entirely one; small things and great are 
alike part of one mighty whole. As the flower 
is gnawed by frost, so every human heart is 
gnawed by faithfulness. And as surely, — as ir- 
revocably, — as the fruit-bud falls before the east 
wind, so fails the power of the kindest human 
heart, if you meet it with poison. 



INFIDELITY IN ENGLAND. 

The form which the infidelity of England, es- 
pecially, has taken, is one hitherto unheard of 
in human history. No nation ever before de- 
clajed boldl}-, by print and word of mouth, that 



142 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

its religion was good for show, but " would not 
work." Over and over again it has happened 
that nations have denied their gods, but they 
denied them bravely. The Greeks in their de- 
cline jested at their religion, and frittered it away 
in flatteries and fine arts; the French refused 
theirs fiercely, tore down their altars and brake 
their carven images. The question about God 
with both these nations was still, even in their 
decline, fairly put, though falsely answered. 
"Either there is or is not a Supreme Ruler; we 
consider of it, declare there is not, and proceed 
accordingly." But we English have put the 
matter in an entirely new light: "There is a 
Supreme Ruler, no question of it, only He can- 
not rule. His orders won't work. He will be 
quite satisfied with euphonious and respectful 
repetition of them. Execution would be too 
dangerous under existing circumstances, which 
He certainly never contemplated." 



THE NOBLENESS OF COLOUR. 

The fact is, we none of us enough appreciate 
the nobleness and sacredness of colour. Noth- 
ing is more common than to hear it spoken of as 
a subordinate beauty, — nay, even as the mere 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 143 

source of a sensual pleasure; and we might al- 
most believe that we were daily among men who 

" Could strip, for aught the pro£;:>ect yields 
To them, their verdure from the fields ; 
And take the radiance from the clouds 
With which the sun his setting shrouds." 

But it is not so. Such expressions are used for 
the most part in thoughtlessness; and if the 
speakers would only take the pains to imagine 
what the world and their own existence would 
become, if the blue were taken from the sky, and 
the gold from the sunshine, and the verdure 
from the leaves, and the crimson from the blood 
which is the life of man, the flush from the cheek, 
the darkness from the eye, the radiance from the 
hair, — if they could but see for an instant, white 
human creatures living in a white world, — they 
would soon feel what they owe to colour. The 
fact is, that, of all God's gifts to the sight of 
man, colour is the holiest, the most divine, the 
most solemn. We speak rashly of gay colour, 
and sad colour, for colour cannot at once be 
good and gay. All good colour is in some de- 
gree pensive, the loveliest is melancholy, and 
the purest and most thoughtful minds are those 
which love colour the most. 



144 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 



THE RAINBOW. 

In that heavenly circle which binds the stat- 
utes of colour upon the front of the sky, when 
it became the sign of the covenant of peace, the 
pure hues of divided light were sanctified to the 
human heart for ever; nor this, it would seem, 
by mere arbitrary appointment, but in conse- 
quence of the fore-ordained and marvellous con- 
stitution of those hues into a sevenfold, or, more 
strictly still, a threefold order, typical of the 
Divine nature itself. Observe also, the name 
Shem, or Splendour, given to that son of Noah 
in whom this covenant with mankind was to be 
fulfilled, and see how that name was justified by 
every one of the Asiatic races which descended 
from him. Not without meaning was the love 
of Israel to his chosen son expressed by the coat 
" of many colours;" not without deep sense of 
the sacredness of that symbol of purity, did the 
lost daughter of David tear it from her breast: — 
" With such robes were the king's daughters that 
were virgins apparelled." * We know it to have 
been by Divine command that the Israelite, res- 
cued from servitude, veiled the tabernacle with 
its rain of purple and scarlet, while the under 
sunshine flashed through the fall of the colour 
from its tenons of gold. 

* 2 Samuel xiii. i8. 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 145 



BROTHERHOOD. 

Whether, indeed, derived from the quarteiings 
of the knights' shields, or from what other source, 
I know not; but there is one magnificent attri- 
bute of the colouring of the late twelfth, the 
whole thirteenth, and the early fourteenth cen- 
tury, which I do not find definitely in any pre- 
vious work, nor afterwards in general art, though 
constantly, and necessarily, in that of great col- 
ourists, namely, the union of one colour with 
another by reciprocal interference: that is to 
say, if a mass of red is to be set beside a mass of 
blue, a piece of the red will be carried into the 
blue, and a piece of the blue carried into the 
red; sometimes in nearly equal portions, as in a 
shield divided into four quarters, of which the 
uppermost on one side will be of the same colour 
as the lowermost on the other; sometimes in 
smaller fragments, but, in the periods above 
named, always definitely and grandly, though in 
a thousand various ways. And I call it a mag- 
nificent principle, for it is an eternal and univer- 
sal one, not in art only, but in human life. It 
is the great principle of Brotherhood, not by 
equality, nor by likeness, but by giving and re- 
ceiving; the souls that are unlike, and the na- 
tions that are unlike, and the natures that are 
unlike, being bound into one noble whole 



14^ PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

by each receiving something from, and of, 
the others' gifts and the others' glory. I have 
not space to follow out this thought, — it is of 
infinite extent and application, — but I note it for 
the reader's pursuit, because I have long be- 
lieved, and the whole second volume of " Modern 
Painters" was written to prove, that in whatever 
has been made by the Deity externally delightful 
to the human sense of beauty, there is some 
type of God's nature or of God's laws; nor are 
any of His laws, in one sense, greater than the 
appointment that the most lovely and perfect 
unity shall be obtained by the taking of one 
nature into another. I trespass upon too high 
ground; and yet I cannot fully show the reader 
the extent of this law, but by leading him thus 
far. And it is just because it is so vast and so 
awful a law, that it has rule over the smallest 
things; and there is not a vein of colour on the 
lightest leaf which the spring winds are at this 
moment unfolding in the fields around us, but it 
is an illustration of an ordainment to which the 
earth and its creatures owe their continuance, 
and their Redemption. 



THE HARVEST IS RIPE. 



" Put ye in the sickle, for the harvest is ripe." 
The word is spoken in our ears continually to 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 14/ 

Other reapers than the angels — to the busy- 
skeletons that never tire for stooping. When 
the measure of iniquity is full, and it seems that 
another day might bring repentance and re- 
demption, — " Put ye in the sickle." When the 
young life has been wasted all away, and the 
eyes are just opening upon the tracks of ruin, 
and faint resolution rising in the heart for 
nobler things, — " Put ye in the sickle." When 
the roughest blows of fortune have been borne 
long and bravely, and the hand is just stretched 
to grasp its goal, — " Put ye in the sickle." 
And when there are but a few in the midst of 
a nation, to save it, or to teach, or to cherish; 
and all its life is bound up in those few 
golden ears, — " Put ye in the sickle, pale reap- 
ers, and pour hemlock for your feast of harvest 
home." 



MISSING THE MARK. 

Perhaps, some day, people will again begin to 
remember the force of the old Greek word for 
sin; and to learn that all sin is in essence — 
" Missing the mark;" losing sight or conscious- 
ness of heaven; and that this loss may be 
various in its guilt: it cannot be judged by us. 
It is this of which the words are spoken so 



I4S PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

sternly, "Judge not;" which words people 
always quote, I observe, when they are called 
upon to " do judgment and justice." For it is 
truly a pleasant thing to condemn men for their 
wanderings; but it is a bitter thing to acknowl- 
edge a truth, or to take any bold share in work- 
ing out an equity. So that the habitual modern 
practical application of the precept, " Judge 
not," is to avoid the trouble of pronouncing 
verdict, by taking, of any matter, the pleasant- 
est malicious view which first comes to hand; 
and to obtain licence for our own convenient 
iniquities, by being indulgent to those of others. 

These two methods of obedience being just 
the two which are most directly opposite to the 
law of mercy and truth. 

"Bind them about thy neck." I said, but 
now, that of an evil tree men never gathered 
good fruit. 



LIFE AND LOVE. 

I must not enter here into the solemn and 
f^-reaching fields of thought which it would be 
necessary to traverse, in order to detect the 
mystical connexion between life and love set 
forth in that Hebrew system of sacrificial relig- 
ion to which we may trace most of the received 



PRECIOUS TJI OUGHTS. 1 49 

ideas respecting sanctity, consecration, and puri- 
fication. This only I must hint to the reader — 
for his own following out — that if he earnestly 
examines the original sources from which our 
heedless popular language respecting the wash- 
ing away of sins has been borrowed, he will find 
that the fountain in which sins are indeed to be 
washed away, is that of love, not of agony. 

But, without approaching the presence of this 
deeper meaning of the sign, the reader may rest 
satisfied with the connexion given him directly 
in written words, between the cloud and its bow. 
The cloud, or firmament, as we have seen, sig- 
nifies the ministration of the heavens to man. 
That ministration may be in judgment or mercy 
— in the lightning, or the dew. But the bow, or 
colour, of the cloud, signifies always mercy, the 
sparing of life; such ministry of the heaven, as 
shall feed and prolong life. And as the sun- 
light, undivided, is the type of the wisdom and 
righteousness of God, so divided, and softened 
into colour by means of the firmamental min- 
istry, fitted to every need of man, as to every 
delight, and becoming one chief source of 
human beauty, by being made part of the flesh 
of man; — thus divided, the sunlight is the type 
of the wisdom of God, becoming sanctification 
and redemption. Various in work — various in 
beauty — various in power. 



150 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

Colour is, therefore, in brief terms, the type 
of love. Hence it is especially connected with 
the blossoming of the earth; and again, with its 
fruits; also, with the spring and fall of the leaf, 
and with the morning and evening of the day, in. 
order to show the waiting of love about the 
birth and death of man. 



SYMBOLS OF TRUTH. 

The fact seems to be that strength of religious 
feeling is capable of supplying for itself what- 
ever is wanting in the rudest suggestions of art, 
and will either, on the one hand, purify what is 
coarse into inoffensiveness, or, on the other, 
raise what is feeble into impressiveness. Prob- 
ably all art, as such, is unsatisfactory to it; and 
the effort which it makes to supply the void will 
be induced rather by association and accident 
than by the real merit of the work submitted to 
it. The likeness to a beloved friend, the corre- 
spondence with a habitual conception, the free- 
dom from any strange or offensive particularity, 
and, above all, an interesting choice of incident, 
will win admiration for a picture when the 
noblest efforts of religious imagination would 
otherwise fail of power. How much more, when 
to the quick capacity of emotion is joined a 



PRECIOUS 7 HO UGH TS. 15I 

childish trust that the picture does indeed rep- 
resent a fact! It matters Httle whether the fact 
be well or ill told; the moment we believe the 
picture to be true, we complain little of its being 
ill-painted. Let it be considered for a moment, 
whether the child, with its coloured print, in- 
quiring eagerly and gravely which is Joseph, and 
which is Benjamin, is not more capable of re- 
ceiving a strong, even a sublime, impression from 
the rude symbol which it invests with reality by 
its own effort, than the connoisseur who admires 
the grouping of the three figures in Raphael's 
"Telling of the Dreams;" and whether also, 
when the human mind is in right religious tone, 
it has not always this childish power — I speak 
advisedly, this power — a noble one, and pos- 
sessed more in youth than at any period of after 
life, but always, I think, restored in a measure 
by religion — of raising into sublimity and reality 
the rudest symbol which is given to it of ac- 
credited truth. 



STRIVING AFTER PERFECTION. 

The modern English mind has this much in 
common with that of the Greek, that it intensely 
desires, in all things, the utmost completion or 
perfection compatible with their nature. This 



152 pr^mcious thoughts. 

is a noble criaractcr :ii the abstract, but becomes 
ignoble when it causes us to forget the relative 
dignities of that nature itself, and to prefer the 
perfectness of the lower nature to the imperfec- 
tion of the higher; not considering that as 
judged by such a rule, all the brute animals 
would be preferable to man, because more per- 
fect in their functions and kind, and yet are 
always held inferior to him, so also in the works 
of man, those which are more perfect in their 
kind are always inferior to those which are, in 
their nature, liable to more faults and short- 
comings. For the finer the nature, the more 
flaws it will show through the clearness of it; 
and it is a law of this universe, that the best 
things shall be seldomest seen in their best form. 
The wild grass grows well and strongly, one 
year with another; but the wheat is, according 
to the greater nobleness of its nature, liable to 
the bitterer blight. And therefore, while in all 
things that we see, or do, we are to desire per- 
fection, and strive for it, wd are nevertheless 
not to set the meaner thing, in its narrow ac- 
complishment, above the nobler thing, in its 
mighty progress; not to esteem smooth minute- 
ness above shattered majesty; not to prefer 
mean victory to honourable defeat; not to lower 
the level of our aim, that we may the more sure- 
ly enjoy the complacency of success. But, 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. I 53 

above all, in our dealings with the souls of other 
men, we are to take care how we check by se- 
vere requirement or narrow caution, efforts 
which might otherwise lead to a noble issue; 
and, still more, how we withhold our admiration 
from great excellences, because they are mingled 
with rough faults. 



THE PINES AND THE SWISS. 

Amidst the delicate delight of cottage and 
field, the young pines stand delicatest of all, 
scented as Avith frankincense, their slender stems 
straight as arrows, and crystal white, looking as 
if they would break with a touch, like needles; 
and their arabesques of dark leaf pierced through 
and through, by the pale radiance of clear sky, 
opal blue, where they follow each other along 
the soft hill-ridges, up and down. 

I have watched them in such scenes with the 
deeper interest, because of all trees they have 
hitherto had most influence on human charac- 
ter. The effect of other vegetation, however 
great, has been divided by mingled species; elm 
and oak in England, poplar in France, birch in 
Scotland, olive in Italy and Spain, share their 
power with inferior trees, and with all the chang- 
ing charm of successive agriculture. But the 



154 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS, 

tremendous unity of the pine absorbs and moulds 
the life of a race. The pine shadows rest upon 
a nation. The Northern peoples, century after 
century, lived under one or other of the two 
great powers of the Pine and the Sea, both in- 
finite. They dwelt amidst the forests, as they 
wandered on the waves, and saw no end, nor 
any other horizon; — still the dark green trees. 
or the dark green waters, jagged the dawn with 
their fringe, or their foam. And whatever ele- 
ments of imagination, or of warrior strength, or 
of domestic justice, were brought down by the 
Norwegian and the Goth against the dissolute- 
ness or degradation of the South of Europe, 
were taught them under the green roofs and 
wild penetralia of the pine. 

I do not attempt, delightful as the task would 
be, to trace this influence (mixed with super- 
stition) in Scandinavia, or North Germany; but 
let us at least note it in the instance which we 
speak of so frequently, yet so seldom take to 
heart. There has been much dispute respecting 
the character of the Swiss, arising out of the 
difficulty which other nations had to understand 
their simplicity. They were assumed to be 
either romantically virtuous, or basely merce- 
nary, when in fact they were neither heroic nor 
base, but were true-hearted men, stubborn with 
more than any recorded stubbornness; not much 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 155 

regarding their lives, yet not casting them cause- 
lessly away; forming no high ideal of improve- 
ment, but never relaxing their grasp of a good 
they had once gained; devoid of all romantic 
sentiment, yet loving with a practical and patient 
love that neither wearied nor forsook; little 
given to enthusiasm in religion, but maintaining 
their faith in a purity which no worldliness 
deadened and no hypocrisy soiled; neither chiv- 
alrously generous nor pathetically humane, yet 
never pursuing their defeated enemies, nor suffer- 
ing their poor to perish: proud, yet not allowing 
their pride to prick them into unwary or unwor- 
thy quarrel; avaricious, yet contentedly render- 
ing to their neighbour his due; dull, but clear- 
sighted to all the principles of justice; and pa- 
tient, without ever allowing delay to be prolonged 
by sloth, or forbearance by fear. 

This temper of Swiss mind, while it animated 
the whole confederacy, was rooted chiefly in one 
small district which formed the heart of theii 
country, yet lay not among its highest moun- 
tains. Beneath the glaciers of Zermatt and 
Evolena, and on the scorching slopes of the 
Valais, the peasants remained in an aimless tor- 
por, unheard of but as the obedient vassals of 
the great Bishopric of Sion. But where the 
lower ledges of calcareous rock were broken by 
the inlets of the Lake Lucerne, and bracing 



15^ PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

winds penetrating from the north forbade the 
growth of the vine, compelling the peasantry 
to adopt an entirely pastoral life, was reared 
another race of men. Their narrow domain 
should be marked by a small green spot on every 
map of Europe, It is about forty miles from 
east to west; as many from north to south: yet 
on that shred of rugged ground, while every 
kingdom of the world around it rose or fell in 
fatal change, and every multitudinous race min- 
gled or wasted itself in various dispersion and 
decline, the simple shepherd dynasty rem.ained 
changeless. There is no record of their origin. 
They are neither Goths, Burgundians, Romans, 
nor Germans. They have been for ever Hel- 
vetii, and for ever free. Voluntarily placing 
themselves under the protection of the House 
of Hapsburg, they acknowledged its supremacy, 
but resisted its oppression; and rose against the 
unjust governors it appointed over them, not to 
gain, but to redeem their liberties. Victorious 
in the struggle by the Lake of Egeri, they stood 
the foremost standard-bearers among the nations 
of Europe in the cause of loyalty and life — loy- 
alty in its highest sense, to the laws of God's 
helpful justice, and of man's faithful and broth- 
erly fortitude. 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 157 



PRECIPICES. 

Precipices are among the most impressive as 
well as the most really dangerous of mountain 
ranges; in many spots inaccessible with safety 
either from below or from above; dark in colour* 
robed with everlasting mourning, for ever totter- 
ing like a great fortress shaken by war, fearful as 
iiuch in their weakness as in their strength, and 
/et gathered after every fall into darker frowns 
and unhumiliated threatening; for ever incapable 
of comfort or of healing from herb or flower, nour- 
ishing no root in their crevices, touched by no 
hue of life on buttress or ledge, but, to the ut- 
most, desolate: knowing no shakmg of leaves in 
the wind, nor of grass beside the stream, — no 
motion but their own mortal shivering, the 
deathful crumbling of atom from atom in their 
corrupting stones; knowing no sound of living 
voice or living tread, cheered neither by the kid's 
bleat nor the marmot's cry; haunted only by 
uninterpreted echoes from far off, wandering 
hither and thither among their walls, unable to 
escape, and by the hiss of angry torrents, and 
sometimes the shriek of a bird that flits near the 
face of them, and sweeps frightened back from 
under their shadow into the gulf of air: and, 
sometimes, when the echo has fainted, and the 
wind has carried the sound of the torrent away. 



158 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

and the bird has vanished, and the mouldering 
stones are still for a little time, — a brown moth, 
opening and shutting its wings upon a grain of 
dust, may be the only thing that moves, or feels, 
in all the waste of weary precipice, darkening 
five thousand feet of the blue depth of heaven. 

It will not be thought that there is nothing in 
a scene such as this deserving our contempla- 
tion, or capable of conveying useful lessons, if it 
were fitly rendered by art. 



THE USE OF PICTURES. 

We should use pictures not as authorities, but 
as comments on nature, just as we use divines, 
not as authorities, but as comments on the 
Bible. Constable, in his dread of saint-worship, 
excommunicates himself from all benefit of the 
Church, and deprives himself of much instruc- 
tion from the Scripture to which he holds, be- 
cause he will not accept aid in the reading of it 
from the learning of other men. Sir George Beau- 
mont, on the contrary, furnishes, in the anecdotes 
given of him in Constable's life, a melancholy in- 
stance of the degradation into which the human 
mind may fall, when it suffers human works to in- 
terfere between it and its Master. The recom- 
mending the colour of an old Cremona fiddle for 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 1 59 

the prevailing tone of everything, and the vapid 
inquiry of the conventionalist, " Where do you 
put your brown tree?" show a prostration of in- 
tellect so laughable and lamentable, that they are 
at once, on all, and to all, students of the gallery, 
a satire and a warning. Art so followed is the 
most servile indolence in which life can be 
wasted. There are then two dangerous extremes 
to be shunned, — forgetfulness of the Scripture, 
and scorn of the divine — slavery on the one hand, 
free-thinking on the other. The mean is nearly 
as difficult to determine or keep in art as in re- 
ligion, but the great danger is on the side of 
superstition. He who walks humbly with Na- 
ture will seldom be in danger of losing sight of 
Art. He will commonly find in all that is truly 
great of man's works, something of their original, 
for which he will regard them with gratitude, 
and sometimes follow them with respect; while 
he who takes Art for his authority may entirely 
lose sight of all that it interprets, and sink at 
once into the sin of an idolater, and the degra- 
dation of a slave. 



SANCTIFICATION. 



All the divisions of humanity are noble or 
brutal, immortal or mortal, according to the de- 



l6o PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

gree of their sanctification; and there is no part 
of the man which is not immortal and divine 
when it is once given to God, and no part of 
him which is not mortal by the second death, 
and brutal before the first, when it is withdrawn 
from God. For to what shall we trust for our 
distinction from the beasts that perish? To our 
higher intellect? — yet we are not bidden to be 
wise as the serpent, and to consider the ways of 
the ant? — or to our affections? nay; these are 
more shared by the lower animals than our in- 
telligence. Hamlet leaps into the grave of his 
beloved, and leaves it, — a dog had stayed. Hu- 
manity and immortality consist neither in rea- 
son, nor in love; nor in the body, nor in the 
animation of the heart of it, nor in the thoughts 
and stirrings of the brain of it, — but in the dedi- 
cation of them all to Him who will raise them 
up at the last day. 



HOW TO LIVE. 

It surely is a subject for serious thought, 
whether it might not be better for many of us, 
if, on attaining a certain position in life, we de- 
termined, with God's permission, to choose a 
home in which to live and die, — a home not to 
be increased by adding stone to stone and field 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. l6l 

to field, but which, being enough for all our 
wishes at that period, we should resolve to be 
satisfied with for ever. Consider this; and also, 
whether we ought not to be more in the habit of 
seeking honour from our descendants than our 
ancestors; thinking it better to be nobly remem- 
bered than nobly born; and striving so to live, 
that our sons, and our sons' sons, for ages to 
come, might still lead their children reverently 
to the doors out of which we had been carried ^ 
to the grave, saying, '' Look: This was his house: 
This was his chamber." 



MAN S NATURE. 

Now the basest thought possible concerning 
man is, that he has no spiritual nature; and the 
foolishest misunderstanding of him possible is, 
that he has or should have, no animal nature. 
For his nature is nobly animal, nobly spiritual — 
coherently and irrevocably so; neither part of 
it may, but at its peril, expel, despise, or defy 
the other. 



SELF-GOVERNMENT. 



There are more people who can forget them- 
selves than govern themselves. 



l62 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 



CANDID SEEING. 

Some years ago, as I was talking of the cur- 
vilinear forms in a piece of rock to one of our 
academicians, he said to me, in a somewhat 
despondent accent, " If you look for curves, you 
will see curves; if you look for angles, you will 
see angles." 

The saying appeared to me an infinitely sad 
one. It was the utterance of an experienced 
man; and in many ways true, for one of the 
most singular gifts, or, if abused, most singular 
weaknesses, of the human mind is its power of 
persuading itself to see whatever it chooses; — a 
great gift, if directed to the discernment of the 
things needful and pertinent to its own work and 
being; a great weakness, if directed to the dis- 
covery of things profitless or discouraging. In 
all things throughout the world, the men who 
look for the crooked will see the crooked, and 
the men who look for the straight will see the 
straight. But yet the saying was a notably sad 
one; for it came of the conviction in the 
speaker's mind that there was in reality no 
crooked and no straight; that all so-called dis- 
cernment was fancy, and that men might, with 
equal rectitude of judgment, and good-deserving 
of their fellow-men, perceive and paint whatever 
was convenient to them. 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 1 63 

Whereas things may always be seen truly by 
candid people, though never co7npletely. No 
human capacity ever yet saw the whole of a 
thing; but we may see more and more of it the 
longer we look. Every individual temper will 
see something different in it: but supposing the 
tempers honest, all the differences are there. 
Every advance in our acuteness of perception 
will show us something new; but the old and 
first discerned thing will still be there, not falsi- 
fied, only modified and enriched by the new per- 
ceptions, becoming continually more beautiful 
in its harmony with them and more approved as 
a part of the Infinite truth. 



INTEMPERANCE. 

Men are held intemperate {^otKoXacT'toi) only 
when their desires overcome or prevent the ac- 
tion of their reason, and they are indeed intem- 
perate in the exact degree in which such preven- 
tion or interference takes place, and so are actu- 
ally aKoXaaroi^ in many instances, and with 
respect to many resolves, which lower not the 
world's estimation of their temperance. But 
when it is palpably evident that the reason can- 
not have erred, but that its voice has been dead- 
ened or disobeyed, and that the reasonable crea- 



164 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

ture has been dragged dead round the walls o£ 
his own citadel by mere passion and impulse, — 
then, and then only, men are of all held intem- 
perate. And this is evidently the case with re- 
spect to inordinate indulgence in pleasures of 
touch and taste, for these, being destructive in 
their continuance not only of all other pleasures, 
but of the very sensibilities by which they them- 
selves are received, and as this penalty is actu- 
ally known and experienced by those indulging 
in them, so that the reason cannot but pro- 
nounce right respecting their perilousness, there 
is no palliation of the wrong choice; and the 
man, as utterly incapable of will, is called in- 
temperate, or aKoXacrroi. 

It would be well if the reader would for him- 
self follow out this subject, which it would be 
irrelevant here to pursue farther, observing how 
a certain degree of intemperance is suspected 
and attributed to men with respect to higher 
impulses; as, for instance, in the case of anger, 
or any other passion criminally indulged, and 
yet is not so attributed, as in the case of sensual 
pleasures; because in anger the reason is sup- 
posed not to have had time to operate, and to 
be itself affected by the presence of the passion, 
which seizes the man involuntarily and before 
he is aware; whereas, in the case of the sensual 
pleasures, the act is deliberate, and determined 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 1 65 

on beforehand, in direct defiance of reason. 
Nevertheless, if no precaution be taken against 
immoderate anger, and the passions gain upon 
the man, so as to be evidently wilful and unre- 
strained, and admitted contrary to all reason, 
we begin to look upon him as, in the real sense 
of the word, intemperate, or aKoXaGtoi^ and 
assign to him, in consequence, his place among 
the beasts, as definitely as if he had .yielded to 
the pleasurable temptations of touch or taste. 



THE I9TH PSALM. 

Take up the 19th Psalm and look at it verse 
by verse. Perhaps to my younger readers one 
word may be permitted respecting their Bible- 
reading in general. The Bible is, indeed, a deep 
book, when depth is required; that is to say, for 
deep people! But it is not intended, particu- 
larly, for profound persons; on the contrary, 
much more for shallow and simple persons. 
And therefore the first, and generally the main 
and leading idea of the Bible, is on its surface, 
written in plainest possible Greek, Hebrew, or 
English, needing no penetration, nor amplifica- 
tion, needing nothing but what we all might give 
— attention. 



1 66 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

But this, which is in every one's power, and is 
the only thing that God wants, is just the last 
thing any one will give Him. 

We are delighted to ramble away into day- 
dreams, to repeat pet verses from other places^ 
suggested by chance words; to snap at an ex- 
pression which suits our own particular views, 
or to dig up a meaning from under a verse, 
which we should be amiably grieved to think 
any human being had been so happy as to find 
before. But the plain, intended, immediate, 
fruitful meaning, which every one ought to find 
always, and especially that which depends on 
our seeing the relation of the verse to those near 
it, and getting the force of the whole passage, 
in due relation — this sort of significance we do 
not look for; — it being, truly, not to be discov- 
ered, unless we really attend to what is said, in- 
stead of to our own feelings. 

It is unfortunate also, but very certain, that 
in order to attend to what is said, we must go 
through the irksomeness of knowing the mean- 
ing of the words. And the first thing that chil- 
dren should be taught about their Bibles is, to 
distinguish clearly between words that they 
understand and words that they do not; and to 
put aside the words they do not understand, and 
verses connected with them, to be asked about, 
or for a future time; and never to think they 



PRECIOUS THOUGIirs. 1 6/ 

are reading the Bible when they are merely re- 
peating phrases of an unknown tongue. 

Let us try, by way of example, this 19th 
Psalm, and see what plain meaning is uppermost 
in it. 

" The heavens declare the glory of God." 

What are the heavens? 

The word occurring in the Lord's Prayer, and 
the thing expressed being what a child may, 
with some advantage, be led to look at, it might 
be supposed among a schoolmaster's first duties 
to explain this word clearly. 

Now there can be no question that in the 
minds of the sacred Avriters, it stood naturally 
for the entire system of cloud, and of space be- 
yond it, conceived by them as a vault set with 
stars. But there can, also, be no question, as 
we saw in previous inquiry, that the firmament, 
which is said to have been " called " heaven, at 
the creation, expresses, in all definite use of the 
word, the system of clouds, as spreading the 
power of the water over the earth; hence the 
constant expressions dew of heaven, rain of 
heaven, etc., where heaven is used in the singu- 
lar; while the " heavens," when used plurally, 
and especially when in distinction, as here, from 
the word "firmament," remained expressive of 
the starry space beyond. 

But whatever different nations had called 



1 68 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

them, at least I would make it clear to the child's 
mind that in this 19th Psalm, their whole power 
being intended, the two words are used which 
express it: the Heavens, for the great vault or 
void, with all its planets, and stars, and cease- 
less march of orbs innumerable; and the Firma- 
ment, for the ordinance of the clouds. 

These heavens, then, declare " the glory of 
God;" that is, the light of God, the eternal: 
glory, stable and changeless. As their orbs fail* 
not, but pursue their course forever to give light 
upon the earth — so God's glory surrounds man 
for ever — changeless, in its fulness insupportable 
— infinite. 

"And the firmament showeth his handiwork^ 
The clouds, prepared by the hands of God for 
the help of man, varied in their ministration — 
veiling the inner splendour — show, not His eter- 
nal glory, but His daily handiwork. So He 
dealt with Moses. I will cover thee " with my 
hand " as I pass by. Compare Job, xxxvi. 24. 

" Remember that thou magnify His work, 
which men behold. Every man may see it." 
Not so the glory — that only in part; the courses 
of these stars are to be seen imperfectly, and 
but by a few. But this firmament, every man 
may see it; man may behold it " afar off." 
" Behold, God is great, and we know him not. 
For he maketh small the drops of water: they 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 1 69 

pour down rain according to the vapour there- 
of." 

" Day unto day uttereth speech, and night un- 
to night sheweth knowledge. They have no 
speech nor language, yet without these their 
voice is heard. Their rule is gone out through- 
out the earth, and their words to the end of the 
world." 

Note that. Their rule throughout the earth, 
whether inhabited or not — their law of right is , 
thereon; but their words, spoken to human 
souls, to the end of the inhabited world. 

" In them hath He set a tabernacle for the 
sun," etc. Literally, a tabernacle, or curtained 
tent, with its veil and its hangings; also of the 
colours of His desert tabernacle — blue, and pur- 
ple, and scarlet. 

Thus far the Psalm describes the manner of 
this great heaven's message. 

Thenceforward, it comes to the matter of 
it. 

Observe, you have the two divisions of the 
declaration. The heavens (compare Psalm viii.) 
declare the eternal glory of God before men, and 
the firmament the daily mercy of God towards 
men. And the eternal glory is in this — that the 
law of the Lord is perfect, and His testimony- 
sure, and His statutes right. 

And the daily mercy in this — that the com- 



I/O PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

mandment of the Lord is pure, and His fear is 
clean, and His judgments true and righteous. 

There are three oppositions:— 

Between law and commandment. 

Between testimony and fear. 

Between statute and judgment. 

I. Between law and commandment. 

The law is fixed and everlasting; uttered once, 
abiding for ever, as the sun, it may not be 
moved. It is "perfect, converting the soul:" 
the whole question about the soul being, whether 
it has been turned from darkness to light, ac- 
knowledged this law or not, — whether it is godly 
or ungodly? But the commandment is given 
momentarily to each man, according to the need. 
It does not convert: it guides. It does not con- 
cern the entire purpose of the soul; but it en- 
lightens the eyes, respecting a special act. The 
law is, " Do this always;" the commandment, 
" Do thou this noiv:'' often mysterious enough, 
and through the cloud; chilling, and with 
strange rain of tears; yet always pure (the law 
converting, but the commandment cleansing): 
a rod not for guiding merely, but for strength- 
ening, and tasting honey with. " Look how mine 
eyes have been enlightened, because I tasted a 
little of this honey." 

II. Between testimony and fear. 

The testimony is everlasting: the true promise 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 17I 

of salvation. Bright as the sun beyond all the 
earth-cloud, it makes wise the simple; all wis- 
dom being assured in perceiving it and trusting 
it; all wisdom brought to nothing which does 
not perceive it. 

But the fear of God is taught through special 
encouragement and special withdrawal of it, ac- 
cording to each man's need — by the earth-cloud 
— smile and frown alternately: it also, as the 
commandment, is clean, purging and casting out 
all other fear, it only remaining for ever. 

III. Between statute and judgment. 

The statutes are the appointments of the 
Eternal justice: fixed and bright, and con- 
stant as the stars; equal and balanced as their 
courses. They " are right, rejoicing the heart." 
But the judgments are special judgments of given 
acts of men. " True," that is to say, fulfilling 
the warning or promise given to each man; 
"righteous altogether," that is, done or executed 
in truth and righteousness. The statute is right, 
in appointment. The judgment righteous alto- 
gether, in appointment and fulfilment; — yet not 
always rejoicing the heart. 

Then, respecting all these, comes the expres- 
sion of passionate desire and of joy; that also 
divided with respect to each. The glory of 
God, eternal in the Heavens, is future, " to be 
desired more than gold, than much fine gold " — • 



1/2 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

treasure in the heavens that faileth not. But 
the present guidance and teaching of God are 
on earth; they are now possessed, sweeter than 
all earthly food — " sweeter than honey and the 
honeycomb. Moreover by them" (the law and 
the testimony) " is Thy servant warned " — 
warned of the ways of death and life. 

" And in keeping them" (the commandments 
and the judgments) " there is great reward;" 
pain now and bitterness of tears, but reward un- 
speakable. 

Thus far the Psalm has been descriptive and 
interpreting. It ends in prayer. 

*' Who can understand his errors?" (wander- 
ings from the perfect law.) " Cleanse thou me 
from secret faults; from all that I have done 
against Thy will, and far from Thy way in the 
darkness. Keep back Thy servant from pre- 
sumptuous sins" (sins against the command- 
ment) " against Thy will when it is seen and di- 
rect, pleading with heart and conscience. So 
shall I be undefiled and innocent from the 
great trangression " — the transgression that 
crucifies afresh. 

" Let the words of my mouth (for I have set 
them to declare Thy law), and the meditation 
of my heart (for I have set it to keep Thy com- 
mandments), be acceptable in Thy sight, whose 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 1 73 

glory is my strength, and whose work my re- 
demption; my Strength and my Redeemer." 



SEEKING FOR FACTS, 

He who habituates himself, in his daily life, 
to seek for the stern facts in whatever he hears 
or sees, will have these facts again brought be- 
fore him by the involuntary imaginative power 
in their noblest associations; and he who seeks 
for frivolities and fallacies, will have frivoli- 
ties and fallacies again presented to him in 
his dreams. Thus if, in reading history for 
the purpose of painting from it, the painter 
severely seeks for the accurate circumstances 
of every event; as, for instance, determining the 
exact spot of ground on which his hero fell, 
the way he must have been looking at the mo- 
ment, the height the sun was at (by the hour 
of the day), and the way in which the Hght must 
have fallen upon his face, the actual number 
and individuality of the persons by him at the 
moment, and such other veritable details, ascer- 
taining and dwelling upon them without the 
slightest care for any desirableness or poetic 
propriety in them, but for their own truth's 
sake; then these truths will afterwards rise up 
and form the body of his imaginative visi^" 



174 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

perfected and united as his inspiration may- 
teach. But if, in reading the history, he does 
not regarci these facts, but thinks only how it 
might all most prettily, and properly, and impres- 
sively have happened, then there is nothing but 
prettiness and propriety to form the body of his 
future imagination, and his whole ideal becomes 
false. So, m the higher or expressive part of 
the work, the whole virtue of it depends on his 
being able to quit his own personality, and enter 
successively into the hearts and thoughts of 
each person; and in all this he is still passive: 
in gathering the truth he is passive, not deter- 
mining what the truth to be gathered shall be; 
and in the after vision he is passive, not deter- 
mining, but as his dreams will have it, what the 
truth to be represented shall be; only according 
to his own nobleness is his power of entering in- 
to the hearts of noble persons, and the general 
character of his dream of them. 



JUSTICE TO THE LIVING. 

It would be well for us if we could quit our 
habit of thinking that what we say of the dead 
is of more weight than what we say of the living. 
The dead either know nothing, or know enough 
to despise both us and our insults, or adulp^^'^*' 



PI^ECIOUS 7710 UGH TS. 175 

" Well, but," it is answered, "there will always 
be this weakness in our human nature; we shall 
for ever, in spite of reason, take pleasure in doing 
funereal honour to the corpse, and writing sacred- 
ness to memory upon marble." Then if you are 
to do this, — if you are to put off your kindness 
until death, — why not, in God's name, put off 
also your enmity? and if you choose to write your 
lingering affections upon stones, wreak also your 
dielayed anger upon clay. This would be just, 
and, in the last case, little as you think it, gener- 
ous. The true baseness is in the bitter reverse 
— the strange iniquity of our folly. Is a man to 
be praised, honoured, pleaded for? It might do 
harm to praise or plead for him while he lived. 
Wait till he is dead. Is he to be maligned, dis- 
honoured, and discomforted? See that you do it 
while he is alive. It would be too ungenerous to 
slander him when he could feel malice no more; 
too contemptible to try to hurt him when he was 
past anguish. Make yourselves busy, ye unjust, 
ye lying, ye hungry for pain! Death is near. 
This is your hour, and the power of darkness. 
Wait, ye just, ye merciful, ye faithful in lovel 
Wait but for a little while, for this is not your 
rest. 



1/6 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 



THE DEFENDERS OF THE DEAD. 

" Is it not, indeed, ungenerous to speak ill of 
the dead, since they cannot defend themselves?" 

Why should they? If you speak ill of them 
falsely, it concerns you, not them. Those lies of 
thine will " hurt a man as thou art," assuredly 
they will hurt thyself; but that clay, or the 
delivered soul of it, in no wise. Ajacean shield, 
seven-folded, never stayed lance-thrust as that 
turf will, with daisies pied. What you say of 
those quiet ones is wholly and utterly the world's 
affair and yours. The lie will, indeed, cost its 
proper price, and work its appointed work; you 
may ruin living myriads by it, — you may stop 
the progress of centuries by it, — you may have 
to pay your own soul for it, — but as for ruffling 
one corner of the folded shroud by it, think it 
not. The dead have none to defend them! 
Nay, they have two defenders, strong enough for 
the need — God, and the worm. 



RIGHT GENERALIZATION. 

To see in all mountains nothing but similar 
heaps of earth; in all rocks, nothing but similar 
concretions of soUd matter; in all trees, nothing 
but similar accumulations of leaves, is p^«Wt- -< 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 1/7 

high feeling or extended thought. The more we 
know, and the more we feel, the more we sepa- 
rate; we separate to obtain a more perfect unity. 
Stones, in the thoughts of the peasant, lie as 
they do on his field, one is like another, and 
there is no connexion between any of them. 
The geologist distinguishes, and in distinguishing 
connects them. Each becomes different from 
its fellow, but in differing from, assumes a rela- 
tion to its fellow; they are no more each the 
repetition of the other, — they are parts of a 
system, and each implies and is connected with 
the existence of the rest. That generalization 
then is right, true, and noble, which is based on 
the knowledge of the distinctions and observ- 
ance of the relations of individual kinds. That 
generalization is wrong, false, and contemptible, 
which is based on ignorance of the one, and dis- 
turbance of the other. It is indeed no general- 
ization, but confusion and chaos; it is the gener- 
alization of a defeated army into indistinguish- 
able impotence — the generalization of the ele- 
ments of a dead carcass into dust. 



THE FORMATIVE PERIOD. 

The common plea that anything does to " ex- 
ercise the mind upon," is an utterly false one. 



1/8 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

The human soul, in youth, is not a machine of 
which you can polish the cogs with any kelp or 
brickdust near at hand; and, having got it into 
working order, and good, empty, and oiled 
serviceableness, start your immortal locomotive 
at twenty-five years old or thirty, express from 
the Strait Gate, on the Narrow Road. The 
whole period of youth is one essentially of for- 
mation, edification, instruction, I use the words 
with their weight in them; intaking of stores, 
establishment in vital habits, hopes, and faiths. 
There is not an hour of it but is trembling with 
destinies, — not a moment of which, once past, 
the appointed work can ever be done again, or 
the neglected blows struck on the cold iron. 
Take your vase of Venice glass out of the 
furnace, and strew chaff over it in its trans- 
parent heat, and recover that to its clearness and 
rubied glory when the north wind has blown 
upon it; but do not think to strew chaff over 
the child fresh from God's presence, and to bring 
the heavenly colours back to him — at least in 
this world. 



MAKING A RIGHT CHOICE. 

A single knot of quartz occurring in a flake of 
slate at the crest of the ridge may alter the 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 1 79 

entire destinies of the mountain form. It may- 
turn the little rivulet of water to the right or 
left, and that little turn will be to the future 
direction of the gathering stream what the touch 
of a finger on the barrel of a rifle would be to 
the direction of a bullet. Each succeeding year 
increases the importance of every determined 
form, and arranges in masses yet more and more 
harmonious, the promontories shaped by the 
sweeping of the eternal waterfalls. 

The importance of the results thus obtained 
by the slightest change of direction in the infant 
streamlets, furnishes an interesting type of the 
formation of human characters by habit. Every 
one of those notable ravines and crags is the ex- 
pression, not of any sudden violence done to the 
mountain, but of its little habits, persisted in 
continually. It was created with one ruling 
instinct; but its destiny depended nevertheless, 
for effective result, on the direction of the small 
and all but invisible tricklings of water, in which 
the first shower of rain found its way down its 
sides. The feeblest, most insensible oozings of 
the drops of dew among its dust were in reality 
arbiters of its eternal form; commissioned, with 
a touch more tender than that of a child's finger, 
— as silent and slight as the fall of a half-checked 
tear on a maiden's cheek, — to fix for ever the 
forms of peak and precipice, and h*^w those 



l8o PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

leagues of lifted granite into the shapes that 
were to divide the earth and its kingdoms. 
Once the little stone evaded, — once the dim 
furrow traced, — and the peak was for ever in- 
vested with its majesty, the ravine for ever 
doomed to its degradation. Thenceforward, 
day by day, the subtle habit gained in power; 
the evaded stone was left with wider basement; 
the chosen furrow deepened with swifter-sliding 
wave; repentance and arrest were alike impossi- 
ble, and hour after hour saw written in larger 
and rockier characters upon the sky, the history 
of the choice that had been directed by a drop 
of rain, and of the balance that had been turned 
by a grain of sand. 



GOOD TEACHING. 

If we have the power of teaching the right to 
anybody we should teach them the right; if we 
have the power of showing them the best thing, 
we should show them the best thing; there will 
always, I fear, be enough want of teaching and 
enough bad teaching, to bring out very curious 
erratical results if we want them. So, if we are 
to teach at all, let us teach the right thing, and 
ever the right thing. There are many attractive 
qualities inconsistent with rightness; — do not let 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. l8l 

us teach them, — let us be content to waive them. 
There are attractive qualities in Burns, and 
attractive qualities in Dickens, which neither of 
those writers would have possessed if the one 
had been educated, and the other had been 
studying higher nature than that of cockney- 
London; but those attractive qualities are not 
such as we should seek in a school of literature. 
If we want to teach young men a good manner 
of writing, we should teach it from Shakspeare, 
^not from Burns; from Walter Scott, — and not 
from Dickens. 



SERIOUSNESS AND LEVITY. 

There is no essential reason, because we live 
after the fatal seventeenth century, that we 
should never again be able to confess interest in 
sculpture, or see brightness in embroidery; nor, 
because now we choose to make the night deadly 
with our pleasures, and the day with our labours, 
prolonging the dance till dawn, and the toil to 
twilight, that we should never again learn how 
rightly to employ the sacred trusts of strength, 
beauty, and time. Whatever external charm 
attaches itself to the past, would then be seen 
in proper subordination to the brightness of 
present life; and the elements of romance would 



1 82 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

exist, in the earlier ages, only in the attraction 
which must generally belong to whatever is 
unfamiliar; in the reverence which a noble 
nation always pays to its ancestors; and in the 
enchanted light which races, like individuals, 
must perceive in looking back to the days of 
their childhood. 

Again: the peculiar levity with which natural 
scenery is regarded by a large number of modern 
minds cannot be considered as entirely charac- 
teristic of the age, inasmuch as it never can 
belong to its greatest intellects. Men of any 
high mental power must be serious, whether in 
ancient or modern days: a certain degree of 
reverence for fair scenery is found in all our 
great writers without exception, — even the one 
who has made us laugh oftenest, taking us to the 
valley of Chamouni, and to the sea beach, there 
to give peace after suffering, and change revenge 
into pity. It is only the dull, the uneducated, 
or the worldly, whom it is painful to meet 
on the hill sides; and levity, as a ruling charac- 
ter, cannot be ascribed to the whole nation, but 
only to its holiday-making apprentices, and its 
House of Commons. 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 1 83 



THE ALPINE PEASANT. 

A slight incident which happened to myself, 
is singularly illustrative of the religious character 
of the Alpine peasant when under favourable 
circumstances of teaching. I was coming down 
one evening from the Rochers de Naye, above 
Montreux, having been at work among the lime- 
stone rocks, where I could get no water, and 
both weary and thirsty. Coming to a spring at 
a turn of the path, conducted, as usual, by the 
herdsmen into a hollowed pine-trunk, I stooped 
to it and drank deeply: as I raised my head, 
drawing breath heavily, some one behind me 
said, "Celui qui boira de cette eau-ci, aura 
encore soif." I turned, not understanding for 
the moment what was meant; and saw one of 
the hill-peasants, probably returning to his chalet 
from the market-place at Vevay or Villeneuve. 
As I looked at him with an uncomprehending 
expression, he went on with the verse: — " Mais 
celui qui boira de I'eau que je lui donnerai, 
n'aura jamais soif." 

I doubt if this would have been thought of, 
or said, by even the most intelligent lowland 
peasant. The thought might have occurred to 
him, but the frankness of address, and expecta- 
tion of being at once understood without a 
word of preparative explanation, as if the Ian- 



1 84 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

guage of the Bible were familiar to all men, 
mark, I think, the mountaineer. 



TOWERS OF ROCK. 

I can hardly conceive any one standing face 
to face with one of these towers of central rock, 
and yet not also asking himself. Is this indeed 
the actual first work of the Divine Master on 
which I gaze? Was the great precipice shaped 
by His finger, as Adam was shaped out of 
the dust? Were its clefts and ledges carved 
upon it by its Creator, as the letters were on the 
Tables of the Law, and was it thus left to bear 
its eternal testimony to His beneficence among 
these clouds of heaven ? Or is it the descendant 
of a long race of mountains, existing under ap- 
pointed laws of birth and endurance, death and 
decrepitude? 

There can be no doubt as to the answer. 
The rock itself answers audibly by the murmur 
of some falling stone or rending pinnacle. It is 
not as it was once. Those waste leagues around 
its feet are loaded with the wrecks of what 
it was. On these, perhaps, of all mountains, the 
characters of decay are written most clearly; 
around these are spread most gloomily the 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 1 85 

memorials of their pride, and the signs of their 
humiliation. 

" What then were they once?" 

The only answer is yet again, — " Behold the 
cloud." 

Their form, as far as human vision can trace 
it, is one of eternal decay. No retrospection 
can raise them out of their ruins, or withdraw 
them beyond the law of their perpetual fate. 
Existing science may be challenged to form, 
with the faintest colour of probability, any con- 
ception of the original aspect of a crystalline 
mountain: it cannot be followed in its elevation, 
nor traced in its connexion with its fellows. 
No eyes ever " saw its substance, yet being im- 
perfect;" its history is a monotone of endurance 
and destruction: all that we can certainly know 
of it, is that it was once greater than it is now, 
and it only gathers vastness, and still gathers, as 
it fades into the abyss of the unknown. 

Yet this one piece of certain evidence ought 
not to be altogether unpursued; and while with 
all humility we shrink from endeavouring to 
theorize respecting processes which are con- 
cealed, we ought not to refuse to follow, as far 
as it will lead us, the course of thought which 
seems marked out by conspicuous and consist- 
ent phenomena. 



1 86 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 



LOVE OF CHANGE. 

In subjects of the intellect, the chief delight 
they convey is dependent upon their being 
newly and vividly comprehended, and as they 
become subjects of contemplation they lose their 
value, and become tasteless and unregarded, ex- 
cept as instruments for the reaching of others, 
only that though they sink down into the 
shadowy, effectless, heap of things indifferent, 
which we pack, and crush down, and stand upon, 
to reach things new, they sparkle afresh at in- 
tervals as we stir them by throwing a new stone 
into the heap, and letting the newly admitted 
lights play upon them. And both in subjects 
of the intellect and the senses it is to be remem- 
bered, that the love of change is a weakness and 
imperfection of our nature, and implies in it the 
state of probation, and that it is to teach us that 
things about us here are not meant for our con- 
tinual possession or satisfaction, that ever such 
passion of change was put in us as that " custom 
lies upon us with a weight, heavy as frost, and 
deep almost as life," and only such weak back 
and baby grasp given to our intellect as that 
" the best things we do are painful, and the ex- 
ercise of them grievous, being continued with- 
out intermission, so as in those very actions 
whereby we are especially perfected in this life 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 1 8/ 

we are not able to persist." And so it will be 
found that they are the weakest-minded and the 
hardest-hearted men that most love variety and 
change, for the weakest-minded are those who 
both wonder most at things new, and digest 
worst things old, in so far that everything they 
have lies rusty, and loses lustre for want of use; 
neither do they make any stir among their pos- 
sessions, nor look over them to see what may be 
made of them, nor keep any great store, nor are 
householders with storehouses of things new 
and old, but they catch at the new-fashioned 
garments, and let the moth and thief look after 
the rest; and the hardest-hearted men are those 
that least feel the endearing and binding power 
of custom, and hold on by no cords of affection 
to any shore, but drive with the waves that cast 
up mire and dirt. 



IMAGINATION. 

We all have a general and sufficient idea of 
imagination, and of its work with our hands and 
in our hearts: we understand it, I suppose, as 
the imaging or picturing of new things in our 
thoughts; and we always show an involuntary 
respect for this power, wherever we can recog- 
nise it, acknowledging it to be a greater power 



1 88 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

than manipulation, or calculation, or observa- 
tion, or any other human faculty. If we see an 
old woman spinning at the fireside, and distrib- 
uting her thread dexterously from the distaff, we 
respect her for her manipulation — if we ask her 
how much she expects to make in a year, and 
she answers quickly, we respect her for her cal- 
culation — if she is watching at the same time 
that none of her grandchildren fall into the fire, 
we respect her for her observation — yet for all 
this she may still be a commonplace old woman 
enough. But if she is all the time telling her 
grandchildren a fairy tale out of her head, we 
praise her for her imagination, and say, she must 
be a rather remarkable old woman. 



SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS. 

Do you recollect the evidence respecting the 
character of this man, — the two points of bright 
peculiar evidence given by the sayings of the 
two greatest literary men of his day, Johnson 
and Goldsmith? Johnson, who, as you know, 
was always Reynolds' attached friend, had but 
one complaint to make against him, that he 
hated nobody: — " Reynolds," he said, " you 
hate no one living; I like a good hater!" Still 
more significant is the little touch in Goldsmith's 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 1 89 

" Retaliation." You recollect how in that poem 
he describes the various persons who met at one 
of their dinners at St. James's Coffee-house, 
each person being described under the name of 
some appropriate dish. You will often hear the 
concluding lines about Reynolds quoted — 

" He shifted his trumpet," etc.; — 

less often, or at least less attentively, the precede 
ing ones, far more important — 

" Still born to improve us in every part — 
His pencil our faces, his vianners our heart/" 

and never, the most characteristic touch of all, 

near the beginning: — 

" Our dean shall be venison, just fresh from the plains ; 
Our Burke shall be tongue, with a garnish of brains ; 
To make out the dinner, full certain I am, 
That Rich is anchovy, and Reynolds is lamb.** 



THE THINKER AND THE PERCEIVER. 

He who, having journeyed all day beside the 
Leman Lake, asked of his companions, at even- 
ing, where it was,* probably was not wanting in 
sensibility; but he was generally a thinker, not 
a perceiver. And this instance is only an ex- 
treme one of the effect which, in all cases, 



* St. Bernard. 



1 90 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

knowledge, becoming a subject of reflection, 
produces upon the sensitive faculties. It must 
be but poor and lifeless knowledge, if it has no 
tendency to force itself forward, and become 
ground for reflection, in despite of the succession 
of external objects. It will not obey their suc- 
cession. The first that comes gives it food 
enough for its day's work; it is its habit, its 
duty, to cast the rest aside, and fasten upon 
that. The first thing that a thinking and know- 
ing man sees in the course of the day, he will 
not easily quit. It is not his way to quit any- 
thing without getting to the bottom of it, if pos- 
sible. But the artist is bound to receive all 
things on the broad, white, lucid field of his soul, 
not to grasp at one. For instance, as the know- 
ing and thinking man watches the sunrise, he 
sees something in the colour of a ray, or the 
change of a cloud, that is new to him; and this 
he follows out forthwith into a labyrinth of 
optical and pneumatical laws, perceiving no 
more clouds nor rays all the morning. But the 
painter must catch all the rays, all the colours 
that come, and see them all truly, all in their 
real relations and succession; therefore, every 
thing that occupies room in his mind he must 
cast aside for the time, as completely as may be. 
The thoughtful man is gone far away to seek; 
but the perceiving man must sit still, and open 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. I9I 

his heart to receive. The thoughtful man is 
knitting and sharpening himself into a two-edged 
sword, wherewith to pierce. The perceiving 
man is stretching himself into a four-cornered 
sheet wherewith to catch. And all the breadth 
to which he can expand himself, and all the 
white emptiness into which he can blanch him- 
self, will not give him the intelligence God has 
to give him. 



A NATION S PLACE IN HISTORY. 

A nation may produce a great effect, and take 
up a high place in the world's history, by the 
temporary enthusiasm or fury of its multitudes, 
without being truly great; or, on the other hand, 
the discipline of morality and common sense 
may extend its physical power or exalt its well- 
being, while yet its creative and imaginative 
powers are continually diminishing. And again: 
a people may take so definite a lead over all the 
rest of the world in one direction, as to obtain 
a respect which is not justly due to them if 
judged on universal grounds. Thus the Greeks 
perfected the sculpture of the human body; 
threw their literature into a disciplined form, 
which has given it a peculiar power over certain 
conditions of modern mind; and were the most 



192 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

carefully educated race that the world has seen; 
but a few years hence, I believe, we shall no 
longer think them a greater people than either 
the Egyptians or Assyrians. 



TREES AND COMMUNITIES. 

There is a strange coincidence between trees 
and communities of men. When the community 
is small, people fall more easily into their places, 
and take, each in his place, a firmer standing 
than can be obtained by the individuals of a 
great nation. The members of a vast com- 
munity are separately weaker, as an aspen or 
elm leaf is thin, tremulous, and directionless, 
compared with the spear-like setting and firm 
substance of a rhododendron or laurel leaf. 
The laurel and rhododendron are like the 
Athenian or Florentine republics; the aspen like 
England — strong-trunked enough when put to 
proof, and very good for making cartwheels of, 
but shaking pale with epidemic panic at every 
breeze. Nevertheless, the aspen has the better 
of the great nation, in that if you take it bough 
by bough, you shall find the gentle law of re- 
spect and room for each other truly observed by 
the leaves in such broken way as they can man- 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 1 93 

age it; but in the nation you find every one 
scrambling for his neighbour's place. 



THE PURIST AND THE SENSUALIST. 

In saying that nearly everything presented to 
us in nature has mingling in it of good and evil, 
I do not mean that nature is conceivably im- 
provable, or that anything that God has made 
could be called evil, if we could see far enough 
into its uses, but that, with respect to immediate 
effects or appearances, it may be so, just as the 
hard rind or bitter kernel of a fruit may be an 
evil to the eater, though in the one is the pro- 
tection of the fruit, and in the other its contin- 
uance. The Purist, therefore, does not mend 
nature, but receives from nature and from God 
that which is good for him; while the Sensual- 
ist fills himself " with the husks that the swine 
did eat." 

The three classes may, therefore, be likened 
to men reaping wheat, of which the Purists take 
the fine flour, and the Sensualists the chaff and 
straw, but the Naturalists take all home, and 
make their cake of the one, and their couch of 
the other. 

For instance. We know more certainly every 
day that whatever appears to us harmful in the 



194 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

universe has some beneficent or necessary opera- 
tion; that the storm which destroys a harvest 
brightens the sunbeams for harvests yet unsown, 
and that the volcano which buries a city pre- 
serves a thousand from destruction. But the 
evil is not for the time less fearful, because we 
have learned it to be necessary; and we easily 
understand the timidity or the tenderness of the 
spirit which would withdraw itself from the 
presence of destruction, and create in its imagi- 
nation a world of which the peace should be 
unbroken, in which the sky should not darken 
nor the sea rage, in which the leaf should not 
change nor the blossom wither. That man is 
greater, however, who contemplates with an 
equal mind the alternations of terror and of 
beauty; who, not rejoicing less beneath the 
sunny sky, can bear also to watch the bars of 
twilight narrowing on the horizon; and, not less 
sensible to the blessing of the peace of nature, 
can rejoice in the magnificence of the ordinances 
by which that peace is protected and secured. 
But separated from both by an tinmeasurable 
distance would be the man who delighted in 
convulsion and disease for their own sake: who 
found his daily food in the disorder of nature 
mingled with the suffering of humanity; and 
watched joyfully at the right hand of the Angel 
whose appointed work is to destroy as well as to 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 1 95 

accuse, while the corners of the House of feast- 
ing were struck by the wind from the wilderness. 
And far more is this true, when the subject 
of contemplation is humanity itself. The pas- 
sions of mankind are partly protective, partly 
beneficent, like the chaff and grain of the corn; 
but none without their use, none without noble- 
ness when seen in balanced unity with the rest 
of the spirit which they are charged to defend. 
The passions of which the end is the continu- 
ance of the race; the indignation which is to 
arm it against injustice, or strengthen it to re- 
sist wanton injury; and the fear * which lies at 
the root of prudence, reverence, and awe, are 
all honourable and beautiful, so long as man is 
regarded in his relations to the existing world. 
The religious Purist, striving to conceive him 
withdrawn from those relations, effaces from the 
countenance the traces of all transitory passion, 
illumines it with holy hope and love, and seals 
it with the serenity of heavenly peace; he con- 
ceals the forms of the body by the deep-folded 
garment, or else represents them under severely 
chastened types, and would rather paint them 
emaciated by the fast, or pale from the torture 
than strengthened by exertion, or flushed by 

* Not selfish fear, caused by want of trust in God, or 
of resolution in the soul. 



196 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

emotion. But the great Naturalist takes the 
human being in its wholeness, in its mortal as 
well as its spiritual strength. Capable of sound- 
ing and sympathising with the whole range of 
its passions, he brings one majestic harmony out 
of them all; he represents it fearlessly in all its 
acts and thoughts, in its haste, its anger, its sen- 
suality, and its pride, as well as in its fortitude 
or faith, but makes it noble in them all; he casts 
aside the veil from the body, and beholds the 
mysteries of its form like an angel looking dowt 
on an inferior creature; there is nothing which 
he is reluctant to behold, nothing that he is 
ashamed to confess; with all that lives, triumph- 
ing, falling, or suffering, he claims kindred, 
either in majesty or in mercy, yet standing, in a 
sort, afar off, unmoved even in the deepness of 
his sympathy; for the spirit within him is too 
thoughtful to be grieved, too brave to be ap- 
palled, and too pure to be polluted. 

How far beneath these two ranks of men shall 
we place, in the scale of being, those whose 
pleasure is only in sin or in suffering; who 
habitually contemplate humanity in poverty or 
decrepitude, fury or sensuality; whose works are 
either temptations to its weakness, or triumphs 
over its ruin, and recognise no other subjects 
for thought or admiration than the subtlety of 
the robber, the rage of the soldier, or the joy of 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 1 97 

the Sybarite. It seems strange, vrhen thus 
definitely stated, that such a school should ex- 
ist. Yet consider a little what gaps and blanks 
would disfigure our gallery and chamber walls, 
in places that we have long approached with 
reverence, if every picture, every statue, were 
removed from them, of which the subject was 
either the vice or the misery of mankind, pour- 
trayed without any moral purpose: consider the 
innumerable groups having reference merely to 
various forms of passion, low or high; drunken 
revels and brawls among peasants, gambling or 
fighting scenes among soldiers, amours and in- 
trigues among every class, brutal battle-pieces, 
banditti subjects, gluts of torture and death in 
famine, wreck, or slaughter, for the sake merely 
of the excitement, — that quickening and sup- 
pling of the dull spirit that cannot be gained for 
it but by bathing it in blood, afterward to wither 
back into stained and stiffened apathy; and 
then that whole vast false heaven of sensual 
passion, full of nymphs, satyrs, graces, goddesses, 
and I know not what, from its high seventh 
circle in Correggio's Antiope, down to the 
Grecized ballet-dancers and smirking Cupids of 
the Parisian upholsterer. Sweep away all this, 
remorselessly, and see how much art we should 
have left. 

And yet these are only the grossest manifesta- 



198 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

tions of the tendency of the school. There are 
subtler, yet not less certain, signs of it in the 
works of men who stand high in the world's list 
of sacred painters. I doubt not that the reader 
was surprised when I named Murillo among the 
men of this third rank. Yet, go into the Dul- 
wich Gallery, and meditate for a little over that 
much celebrated picture of the two beggar boys^ 
one eating lying on the ground, the other stand- 
ing beside him. We have among our own paint- 
ers one who cannot indeed be set beside Murillo 
as a painter of Madonnas, for he is a pure Nat- 
uralist, and, never having seen a Madonna, does 
not paint any; but who, as a painter of beggar 
or peasant boys, may be set beside Murillo, or 
any one else, — W. Hunt. He loves peasant 
boys, because he finds them more roughly and 
picturesquely dressed, and more healthily col- 
oured, than others. And he paints all that he 
sees in them fearlessly; all the health and 
humour, and freshness, and vitality, together 
with such awkwardness and stupidity, and what 
else of negative or positive harm there may be 
in the creature; but yet so that on the whole we 
love it, and find it perhaps even beautiful, or if 
not, at least we see that there is capability of 
good in it, rather than of evil; and all is lighted 
up by a sunshine and sweet colour that makes 
the smock frock as precious as cloth of gold. 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 1 99 

But look at those two ragged and vicious va- 
grants that Murillo has gathered out of the 
street. You smile at first, because they are eat- 
ing so naturally, and their roguery is so complete. 
But is there anything else than roguery there, 
or was it well for the painter to give his time to 
the painting of those repulsive and wicked chil- 
dren? Do you feel moved with any charity 
towards children as you look at them? Are we 
the least more likely to take any interest in 
ragged schools, or to help the next pauper child 
that comes in our way, because the painter has 
shown us a cunning beggar feeding greedily. 
Mark the choice of the act. He might have 
shov/n hunger in other ways, and given interest 
to even this act of eating, by making the face 
wasted, or the eye wistful. But he did not care 
to do this. He delighted merely in the disgust- 
ing manner of eating, the food filling the cheek: 
the boy is not hungry, else he would not turn 
round to talk and grin as he eats. 

But observe another point in the lower figure. 
It lies so that the sole of the foot is turned 
towards the spectator; not because it would 
have lain less easily in another attitude, but that 
the painter may draw, and exhibit, the grey dust 
engrained in the foot. Do not call this the 
painting of nature: it is mere delight in foulness. 
The lesson, if there be any, in the picture, is not 



2(X) PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

one whit the stronger. We all know that a 
beggar's bare foot cannot be clean; there is no 
need to thrust its degradation into the light, as 
if no human imagination were vigorous enough 
for its conception. 



THE TYPE OF STRONG AND NOBLE LIFE. 

Great Art is nothing else than the type of 
strong and noble life; for, as the ignoble person, 
in his dealings with all that occurs in the world 
about him, first sees nothing clearly, — looks 
nothing fairly in the face, and then allows him- 
self to be swept away by the trampling torrent, 
and unescapable force, of the things that he 
would not foresee, and could not understand: so 
the noble person, looking the facts of the world 
full in the face, and fathoming them with deep 
faculty, then deals with them in unalarmed 
intelligence and unhurried strength, and be- 
comes, with his human intellect and will, no un- 
conscious nor insignificant agent, in consum- 
mating their good, and restraining their evil. 



THE VISIBLE AND THE TANGIBLE. 

Of no other source than the tangible and the 
visible can we, by any effort in our present con- 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 201 

dition of existence, conceive. For what revela- 
tions have been made to humanity inspired, or 
caught up to heaven of things to the heavenly 
region belonging, have been either by unspeaka- 
ble words which it is not lawful for a man to 
utter, or else by their very nature incommunica- 
ble, except in types and shadows; and ineffable 
by words belonging to earth, for of things differ- 
ent from the visible, words appropriated to the 
visible can convey no image. How different 
from earthly gold that clear pavement of the city 
might have seemed to the eyes of St. John, we 
of unreceived sight cannot know; neither of 
that strange jasper and sardine can we conceive 
the likeness which he assumed that sat on the 
throne above the crystal sea; neither what seem- 
ing that was of slaying that the Root of David 
bore in the midst of the elders; neither what 
change it was upon the form of the fourth 
of them that walked in the furnace of Dura, that 
even the wrath of idolatry knew for the likeness 
of the Son of God. 



MODERN GREATNESS. 



The simple fact, that we are, in some strange 
way, different from all the great races that have 
existed before us, cannot at once be received as 



202 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

the proof of our own greatness; nor can it 
be granted, without any question, that we have 
a legitimate subject of complacency in being 
under the influence of feelings, with which 
neither Miltiades nor the Black Prince, neither 
Homer nor Dante, neither Socrates nor St. 
Francis, could for an instant have sympathized. 
Whether, however, this fact be one to excite 
our pride or not, it is assuredly one to excite our 
deepest interest. The fact itself is certain. For 
nearly six thousand years the energies of man 
have pursued certain beaten paths, manifesting 
some constancy of feeling throughout all that 
period, and involving some fellowship at heart, 
among the various nations who by turns suc- 
ceeded or surpassed each other in the several 
aims of art or policy. So that, for these thou- 
sands of years, the whole human race might be 
to some extent described in general terms. Man 
was a creature separated from all others by his 
instinctive sense of an Existence superior to his 
own, invariably manifesting this sense of the 
being of a God more strongly in proportion 
to his own perfectness of mind and body; and 
making enormous and self-denying efforts, in 
order to obtain some persuasion of the im- 
mediate presence or approval of the Divinity, 



PRECIOUS TH OUGHTS. 203 



SMOKE AND THE WHIRLWIND. 

Much of the love of mystery in our romances, 
our poetry, our art, and, above all, in our meta- 
physics, must come under that definition so 
long ago given by the great Greek, " speaking 
ingeniously concerning smoke." And much of 
the instinct, which, partially developed in paint- 
ing, may be now seen throughout every mode of 
exertion of mind, — the easily encouraged doubt, 
easily excited curiosity, habitual agitation, and 
delight in the changing and the marvellous, as 
opposed to the old quiet serenity of social cus- 
tom and religious faith, is again deeply defined 
in those few words, the " dethroning of Jupiter," 
the "coronation of the whirlwind." 



MODERN ENTANGLEMENT. 

The vain and haughty projects of youth for 
future life; the giddy reveries of insatiable self-x 
exaltation; the discontented dreams of what 
might have been or should be, instead of the 
thankful understanding of what is; the casting 
about for sources of interest in senseless fiction, 
instead of the real human histories of the people 
round us; the prolongation from age to age of 



204 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

romantic historical deceptions instead of sifted 
truth; the pleasures taken in fanciful portraits 
of rural or romantic life in poetry and on the 
stage, without the smallest effort to rescue the 
living rural population of the world from its 
ignorance or misery; the excitement of the feel- 
ings by laboured imagination of spirits, fairies, 
monsters, and demons, issuing in total blindness 
of heart and sight to the true presences of benefi- 
cent or destructive spiritual powers around us; 
in fine, the constant abandonment of all the 
straightforward paths of sense and duty, for fear 
of losing some of the enticement of ghostly 
joys, or trampling somewhat " sopra lor vanita, 
che par persona;" all these various forms of false 
idealism have so entangled the modern mind, 
often called, I suppose ironically, practical, that 
truly I believe there never yet was idolatry 
of stock or staff so utterly unholy as this our 
idolatry of shadows; nor can I think that, of 
those who burnt incense under oaks, and poplars, 
and elms, because '' the shadow thereof was 
good," it could in any wise be more justly 
or sternly declared than of us — " The wind hath 
bound them up in her wing, and they shall be 
ashamed because of their sacrifices." * 

*Hosea, chap. iv. 12, 13, and 19. 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 20$ 



THE DIVINE GOVERNMENT. 

All human government is nothing else than 
the executive expression of Divine authority. 
The moment government ceases to be the prac- 
tical enforcement of Divine law, it is tyranny; 
and the meaning which I attach to the words, 
" paternal government," is, in more extended 
terms, simply this — " The executive fulfilment, 
by formal human methods, of the will of the 
Father of mankind respecting His children." 



THREE ORDERS OF HUMAN BEINGS. 

The apathy which cannot perceive beauty is 
very different from the stern energy which dis- 
dains it; and the coldness of heart which re- 
ceives no emotion from external nature, is not 
to be confounded with the wisdom of purpose 
which represses emotion in action. In the case 
of most men, it is neither acuteness of the rea- 
son, nor breadth of humanity, which shields them 
from the impressions of natural scenery, but 
rather low anxieties, vain discontents, and mean 
pleasures; and for one who is blinded to the 
works of God by profound abstraction or lofty 
purpose, tens of thousands have their eyes sealed 



206 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS, 

by vulgar selfishness, and their intelligence 
crushed by impious care. 

Observe, then: we have, among mankind in 
general, the three orders of being; — the lowest, 
sordid and selfish, which neither sees nor feels; 
the second, noble and sympathetic, but which 
sees and feels without concluding or acting; the 
third and highest, which loses sight in resolu- 
tion, and feeling in work. 



NATURAL ADMIRATION. 

Examine well the channels of your admiration, 
and you will find that they are, in verity, as un- 
changeable as the channels of your heart's 
blood; that just as by the pressure of a band- 
age, or by unwholesome and perpetual action of 
some part of the body, that blood may be wasted 
or arrested, and in its stagnancy cease to nour- 
ish the frame, or in its disturbed flow affect it 
with incurable disease, so also admiration itself 
may, by the bandages of fashion, bound close 
over the eyes and the arteries of the soul, be ar- 
rested in its natural pulse and healthy flow; but 
that wherever the artificial pressure is removed, 
it will return into that bed which has been traced 
for it by the finger of God. 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 20/ 



THE REFORMATION. 

The Strength of the Reformation lay entirely 
in its being a movement towards purity of prac- 
tice. 

The Catholic priesthood was hostile to it in 
proportion to the degree in which they had been 
false to their own principles of moral action, 
and had become corrupt or worldly in heart. 

The Reformers indeed cast out many absurdi- 
ties, and demonstrated many fallacies, in the 
teaching of the Roman Catholic Church. But 
they themselves introduced errors, which rent 
the ranks, and finally arrested the march of the 
Reformation, and which paralyse the Protestant 
Church to this day. Errors of which the fatal- 
ity was increased by the controversial bent which 
lost accuracy of meaning in force of declama- 
tion, and turned expressions, which ought to be 
used only in retired depth of thought, into 
phrases of custom, or watchwords of attack. 
Owing to which habits of hot, ingenious, and 
unguarded controversy, the Reformed churches 
themselves soon forgot the meaning of the word 
which, of all words, was oftenest in their mouths. 
They forgot that nicjrii is a derivative of 
Tieido^ai, not of niarevoj, and that " fides," 
closely connected with "fio" on one side, and 



208 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

with " confido" on the other, is but distantly re- 
lated to " credo." * 

By whatever means, however, the reader may 
himself be disposed to admit, the Reformation 
was arrested; and got itself shut up into chan- 
cels of cathedrals in England (even those, gen- 
erally too large for it), and into conventicles 
everywhere else. Then rising between the in- 
fancy of Reformation, and the palsy of Catholi- 
cism; — between a new shell of half -built religion 
on one side daubed with untempered mortar, 
and a falling ruin of outworn religion on the 
other, lizard-crannied and ivy-grown; — rose, on 
its independent foundation, the faithless and ma- 
terialized mind of modern Europe — ending in the 
rationalism of Germany, the polite formalism of 
England, the careless blasphemy of France, and 
the helpless sensualities of Italy; in the midst 
of which, steadily advancing science, and the 
charities of more and more widely extended 

* None of our present forms of opinion are more curious 
than those which have developed themselves from this 
verbal carelessness. It never seems to strike any of our 
religious teachers, that if a child has a father living, it 
either knows it has a father, or does not: it does not " be- 
lieve" it has a father. We should be surprised to see an 
intelligent child standing at its garden gate, cryinc; out to 
the passers-by : "I believe in my father, because be built 
this house;" as logical people proclaim that they b<elieve 
in God, because He must have made the world. 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 209 

peace, are preparing the way for a Christian 
church, which shall depend neither on ignorance 
for its continuance, nor on controversy for 
its progress; but shall reign at once in light and 
love. 



QUIETNESS. 



The refusal or reserve of a mighty painter 
cannot be imitated; it is only by reaching the 
same intellectual strength that you will be able 
to give an equal dignity to your self-denial. No 
one can tell you beforehand what to accept, or 
what to ignore; only remember always, in paint- 
ing as in eloquence, the greater your strength, 
the quieter will be your manner, and the fewer 
your words; and in painting, as in all the arts 
and acts of life, the secret of high success will 
be found, not in a fretful and various excellence, 
but in a quiet singleness of justly chosen aim. 



THE TRUE GENTLEMAN. 



Two great errors, colouring, or rather discolour- 
ing, severally, the minds of the higher and lower 
classes, have sown wide dissension, and wider 
misfortune, through the society of modern days. 



210 PRELiuUS THOUGHTS. 

These errors are in our modes of interpreting 
the word " gentleman." 

Its primal, literal, and perpetual meaning is 
" a man of pure race;" well bred, in the sense 
that a horse or dog is well bred. 

The so-called higher classes, being generally 
of purer race than the lower, have retained the 
true idea, and the convictions associated with 
it; but are afraid to speak it out, and equivocate 
about it in public; this equivocation mainly pro- 
ceeding from their desire to connect another 
meaning with it, and a false one; — that of " a 
man living in idleness on other people's labour:'* 
with which idea the term has nothing whatever 
to do. 

The lower classes, denying vigorously, and 
with reason, the notion that a gentleman means 
an idler, and rightly feeling that the more any 
one works, the more of a gentleman he becomes, 
and is likely to become, — have nevertheless got 
little of the good they otherwise might, from the 
truth, because, with it, they wanted to hold a 
falsehood, — namely, that race was of no conse- 
quence. It being precisely of as much conse- 
quence in man as it is in any other animal. 

The nation cannot truly prosper till both these 
errors are finally got quit of. Gentlemen have 
to learn that it is no part of their duty or privi- 
lege to live on other people's toil. They have 



PRECrO us 7 110 UGII TS. 2 I I 

to learn that there is no degradation in the hard- 
est manual, or the humblest servile, labour, when 
it is honest. But that there is degradation, and 
that deep, in extravagance, in bribery, in indo- 
lence, in pride, in taking places they ate not fit for, 
or in coining places for which there is no need. 
It does not disgrace a gentleman to become an 
errand boy, or a day labourer ; but it disgraces 
him much to become a knave, or a thief. And 
knavery is not the less knavery because it in- 
volves large interests, nor theft the less theft 
because it is countenanced by usage, or accom- 
panied by failure in undertaken duty. It is an 
incomparably less guilty form of robbery to cut 
a purse out of a man's pocket, than to take it 
out of his hand on the understanding that you 
are to steer his ship up channel, when you do 
not know the soundings. 

On the other hand, the lower orders, and all 
orders, have to learn that every vicious habit and 
chronic disease communicates itself by descent; 
and that by purity of birth the entire system of 
the human body and soul may be gradually ele- 
vated, or by recklessness of birth, degraded; un- 
til there shall be as much difference between 
the well-bred and ill-bred human creature (what- 
ever pains be taken with their education) as be- 
tween a wolf-hound and the vilest mongrel cur. 
And the knowledge of this great fact ought to 



212 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

regulate the education of our youth, and the 
entire conduct of the nation.* 

Gentlemanliness, however, in ordinary par- 
lance, must be taken to signify those qualities 
which are usually the evidence of high breeding, 

*We ought always in pure English to use the term 
" good breeding" literally; and to say "good nurture'* 
for what we usually mean by good breeding. Given the 
race and make of the animal, you may turn it to good or 
bad account; you may spoil your good dog or colt, and 
make him as vicious as you choose, or break his back at 
once by ill-usage; and you may, on the other hand, make 
something serviceable and respectable out of your poor 
cur or colt if you educate them carefully; but ill-bred they 
will both of them be to their lives' end; and the best you 
will ever be able to say of them is, that they are useful, 
and decently behaved ill-bred creatures. An error, which 
is associated with the truth, and which makes it always 
look weak and disputable, is the confusion of race with 
name; and the supposition that the blood of a family 
must still be good, if its genealogy be unbroken and its 
name not lost, though sire and son have been indulging 
age after age in habits involving perpetual degeneracy of 
race. Of course it is equally an error to suppose that, 
because a man's name is common, his blood must be 
base; since his family may have been ennobling it by 
pureness of moral habit for many generations, and yet 
may not have got any title or other sign of nobleness at- 
tached to their names. Nevertheless, the probability is 
always in favour of the race which has had acknowledged 
supremacy, and in which every motive leads to the en- 
deavour to preserve their true nobility. 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 213 

and which, so far as they can be acquired, it should 
be every man's effort to acquire; or, if he has 
them by nature, to preserve and exalt. Vulgar- 
ity, on the other hand, will signify qualities 
usually characteristic of ill-breeding, which, ac- 
cording to his power, it becomes every person's 
duty to subdue. We have briefly to note what 
these are. 

A gentleman's first characteristic is that fine- 
ness of structure in the body, which renders it \ 
capable of the most delicate sensation; and of 
structure in the mind which renders it capable 
of the most delicate sympathies — one may say, 
simply " fineness of nature." This is, of course, 
compatible with heroic bodily strength and mental 
firmness; in fact heroic strength is not conceiv- 
able without such delicacy. Elephantine strength 
may drive its way through a forest and feel no 
touch of the boughs; but the white skin of 
Homer's Atrides would have felt a bent rose- 
leaf, yet subdue its feelings in glow of battle, 
and behave itself like iron. I do not mean to 
call an elephant a vulgar animal; but if you 
think about him carefully, you will find that his 
non-vulgarity consists in such gentleness as is 
possible to elephantine nature; not in his insen- 
sitive hide, nor in his clumsy foot; but in the 
way he will lift his foot if a child lies in his way; 
and in his sensitive trunk, and still more sensi- 



214 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS, 

tive mind, and capability of pique on points of 
honour. 

And, though Tightness of moral conduct is ul- 
timately the great purifier of race, the sign of 
nobleness is not in this Tightness of moral con- 
duct, but in sensitiveness. When the make of 
the creature is fine, its temptations are strong, 
as well as its perceptions ; it is liable to all kinds 
of impressions from without in their most vio- 
lent form; liable therefore to be abused and 
hurt by all kinds of rough things which would 
do a coarser creature little harm, and thus to 
fall into frightful wrong if its fate will have it so. 
Thus David, coming of gentlest as well as roy- 
alest race, of Ruth as well as of Judah, is sensi- 
tiveness through all flesh and spirit; not that his 
compassion will restrain him from murder when 
his terror urges him to it; nay, he is driven to 
the murder all the more by his sensitiveness to 
the shame which otherwise threatens him. But 
when his own story is told him under a disguise, 
though only a lamb is now concerned, his pas- 
sion about it leaves him no time for thought. 
" The man shall die" — note the reason — " be- 
cause he had no pity." He is so eager and in- 
dignant that it never occurs to him as strange 
that Nathan hides the name. This is the true 
gentleman. A vulgar man would assuredly have 
been cautious, and asked " who it was?" 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 21$ 

Hence it will follow that one of the probable 
signs of high-breeding in men generally, will be 
their kindness and mercifulness; these always 
indicating more or less fineness of make in the 
mind; an-d miserliness and cruelty the contrary; 
hence that of Isaiah: " The vile person shall no 
more be called liberal, nor the churl said to be 
bountiful." But a thousand things may prevent 
this kindness from displaying or continuing it- 
self; the mind of the man may be warped so as 
to bear mainly on his own interests, and then all 
his sensibilities will take the form of pride, or 
fastidiousness, or revengefulness; and other 
wicked, but not ungentlemanly tempers; or, far- 
ther, they may run into utter sensuality and 
covetousness, if he is bent on pleasure, accom- 
panied with quite infinite cruelty when the pride 
is wounded or the passions thwarted; — until your 
gentleman becomes Ezzelin, and your lady, the 
deadly Lucrece; yet still gentleman and lady, 
quite incapable of making anything else of them- 
selves, being so born. 

A truer sign of breeding than mere kind- 
ness is therefore sympathy; a vulgar man 
may often be kind in a hard way, on princi- 
ple, and because he thinks he ought to be; 
whereas, a highly-bred man, even when cruel, 
will be cruel in a softer way, understanding and 
feeling what he inflicts, and pitying his vie- 



2l6 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS, 

tim. Only we must carefully remember that 
the quantity of sympathy a gentleman feels can 
never be judged of by its outward expression, 
for another of his chief characteristics is appar- 
ent reserve. I say "apparent" reserve; for the 
sympathy is real, but the reserve not: a perfect 
gentleman is never reserved, but sweetly and en- 
tirely open, so far as it is good for others, or 
possible, that he should be. In a great many re- 
spects it is impossible that he should be open ex- 
cept to men of his own kind. To them, he can 
open himself, by a word, or syllable, or a glance; 
but to men not of his kind he cannot open him- 
self, though he tried it through an eternity of 
clear grammatical speech. By the very acute- 
ness of his sympathy he knows how much of 
himself he can give to anybody; and he gives 
that much frankly; — would always be glad to 
give more if he could, but is obliged, neverthe- 
less, in his general intercourse with the world, 
to be a somewhat silent person; silence is to 
most people, he finds, less reserve than speech. 
Whatever he said, a vulgar man would misinter- 
pret: no words that he could use would bear the 
same sense to the vulgar man that they do to 
him; if he used any, the vulgar man would go 
away saying, " He had said so and so, and meant 
so and so" (something assuredly he never meant) ; 
but he keeps silence, and the vulgar man goes 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 21/ 

away saying, " He didn't know what to make ot 
him." Which is precisely the fact, and the only 
fact which he is anywise able to announce to the 
vulgar man concerning himself. 

There is yet another quite as efficient cause 
of the apparent reserve of a gentleman. His 
sensibility being constant and intelligent, it will 
be seldom that a feeling touches him, however 
acutely, but it has touched him in the same way 
often before, and in some sort is touching him 
always. It is not that he feels little, but that 
he feels habitually; a vulgar man having some 
heart at the bottom of him, if you can by talk 
or by sight fairly force the pathos of anything 
down to his heart, will be excited about it and 
demonstrative; the sensation of pity being 
strange to him, and wonderful. But your gentle- 
man has walked in pity all day long; the tears 
have never been out of his eyes; you thought 
the eyes were bright only; but they were wet. 
You tell him a sorrowful story, and his counte- 
nance does not change; the eyes can but be wet 
still; he does not speak neither, there being, in 
fact, nothing to be said, only something to be 
done; some vulgar person, beside you both, 
goes away saying, " How hard he is!" Next 
day he hears that the hard person has put good 
end to the sorrow he said nothing about; — and 



2l8 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

then he changes his wonder and exclaims, " How 
reserved he is!" 

Self-command is often thought a characteris- 
tic of high breeding: and to a certain extent it 
is so, at least it is one of the means of forming 
and strengthening character; but it is rather a 
way of imitating a gentleman than a character- 
istic of him; a true gentleman has no need of 
self-command; he simply feels rightly on all oc- 
casions: and desiring to express only so much 
of his feeling as it is right to express, does not 
need to command himself. Hence perfect ease 
is indeed characteristic of him; but perfect ease 
is inconsistent with self-restraint. Nevertheless 
gentlemen, so far as they fail of their own ideal, 
need to command themselves, and do so; while, 
on the contrary, to feel unwisely, and to be un 
able to restrain the expression of the unwise 
feeling, is vulgarity; and yet even then, the vul- 
garity, at its root, is not in the mistimed expres- 
sion, but in the unseemly feeling; and when we 
find fault with a vulgar person for " exposing 
himself," it is not his openness, but clumsiness; 
and yet more the want of sensibility to his own 
failure, which we blame; so that still the vul- 
garity resolves itself into want of sensibility. 
Also, it is to be noted that great pov/ers of self- 
restraint may be attained by very vulgar persons, 
when it suits their purposes. 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 219 

Closely, but strangely, connected with this 
openness is that form of truthfulness which is op- 
posed to cunning, yet not opposed to falsity ab- 
solute. And herein is a distinction of great im- 
portance. 

Cunning signifies especially a habit or gift of 
over-reaching accompanied with enjoyment and 
a sense of superiority. It is associated with small 
and dull conceit, and with an absolute want of 
sympathy or affection. Its essential connexion 
with vulgarity may be at once exemplified by the 
expression of the butcher's dog in Landseer's 
^'Low Life." Cruikshank's "Noah Claypole," 
in the illustrations to Oliver Twist, in the inter- 
view with the Jew, is, however, still more char- 
acteristic. It is the intensest rendering of vul- 
garity absolute and utter with which I am ac- 
quainted.* 

The truthfulness which is opposed to cunning 
ought, perhaps, rather to be called the desire of 
truthfulness; it comes more in unwillingness to 

* Among the reckless losses of the right service of in- 
tellectual power with which this century must be charged, 
very few are, to my mind, more to be regretted than that 
which is involved in its having turned to no higher purpose 
than the illustration of the career of Jack Sheppard, and of 
the Irish Rebellion, the great, grave (I use the words de- 
liberately and with large meaning), and singular genius of 
Cruikshank. 



220 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

deceive than in not deceiving, — and unwilling- 
ness implying sympathy with and respect for the 
person deceived; and a fond observance of truth 
up to the possible point, as in a good soldier's 
mode of retaining his honour through a ruse-de- 
guerre. A cunning person seeks for opportuni- 
ties to deceive; a gentleman shuns them. A 
cunning person triumphs in deceiving; a gentle- 
man is humiliated by the success, or at least by 
so much of the success as is dependent merely 
on the falsehood, and not on his intellectual su- 
periority. 

The absolute disdain of all lying belongs 
rather to Christian chivalry than to mere high 
breeding; as connected merely with this latter, 
and with general resolution and courage, the ex- 
act relations of truthfulness may be best studied 
in the well-trained Greek mind. The Greeks 
believed that mercy and truth were co-relative 
virtues — cruelty and falsehood, co-relative vices. 
But they did not call necessary severity, cruelty; 
nor necessary deception, falsehood. It was 
needful sometimes to slay men, and sometimes 
to deceive them. When this had to be done, it 
should be done well and thoroughly; so that to 
direct a spear well to its mark, or a lie well to 
its end, was equally the accomplishment of a 
perfect gentleman. Hence, in the pretty dia- 
mond-cut-diamond scene between Pallas and 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 221 

Ulysses, when she receives him on the coast of 
Ithaca, the goddess laughs delightedly at her 
hero's good lying, and gives him her hand upon 
it; she feels herself then in her woman's form, 
as just a little more than his match. " Subtle 
would he be, and stealthy, who should go beyond 
thee in deceit, even were he a god, thou many- 
witted! What! here in thine own land, too, 
wilt thou not cease from cheating? Knowest 
thou not me, Pallas Athena, maid of Jove, who 
am with thee in all thy labours, and gave thee 
favour with the Phaeacians, and keep thee, and 
have come now to weave cunning with thee?" 
But how completely this kind of cunning was 
looked upon as a part of a man's power, and not 
as a diminution of faithfulness, is perhaps best 
shown by the single line of praise in which the 
high qualities of his servant are summed up by 
Chremulus in the Plutus — " Of all my house 
servants, I hold you to be the faithfullest, and 
the greatest cheat (or thief)." 

Thus, the primal difference between honour- 
able and base lying in the Greek mind lay in 
honourable purpose. A man who used his 
strength wantonly to hurt others was a monster; 
so, also, a man who used his cunning wantonly 
to hurt others. Strength and cunning were to 
be used only in self-defence, or to save the weak, 
and then were alike admirable. This was their 



222 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

first idea. Then the second, and perhaps the 
more essential difference between noble and 
ignoble lying in the Greek mind, was that the 
honourable lie — or, if we may use the strange, 
yet just, expression, the true lie — knew and 
confessed itself for such — was ready to take the 
full responsibility of what it did. As the sword 
answered for its blow so the lie for its snare. 
But what the Greeks hated with all their heart 
was the false lie; the lie that did not know itself, 
feared to confess itself, which slunk to its aim 
under a cloak of truth, and sought to do liars' 
work, and yet not take liars' pay, excusing itself 
to the conscience by quibble and quirk. Hence 
the great expression of Jesuit principle by 
Euripides, " The tongue has sworn, but not the 
heart," was a subject of execration throughout 
Greece, and the satirists exhausted their arrows 
on it — no audience was ever tired hearing (to 
EvpiTtiSeiov €K€ivo) "that Euripidian thing" 
brought to shame. 

And this is especially to be insisted on in the 
early education of young people. It should be 
pointed out to them with continual earnestness 
that the essence of lying is in deception, not in 
words; a lie may be told by silence, by equivo- 
cation, by the accent on a syllable, by a glance 
of the eye attaching a peculiar significance to a 
sentence: and all these kinds of lies are worse 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 22$ 

and baser by many degrees than a lie plainly 
worded; so that no form of blinded conscience 
is so far sunk as that which comforts itself 
for having deceived, because the deception was 
by gesture or silence, instead of utterance, and, 
finally, according to Tennyson's deep and tren- 
chant line, " A lie which is half a truth is ever 
the worst of lies." 

Although, however, ungenerous cunning is 
usually so distinct an outward manifestation 
of vulgarity, that I name it separately from 
insensibility, it is in truth only an effect of 
insensibility, producing want of affection to 
others, and blindness to the beauty of truth. 
The degree in which political subtlety in men 
such as Richelieu, Machiavel, or Metternich, 
will efface the gentleman, depends on the self- 
ishness of political purpose to which the cunning 
is directed, and on the base delight taken in its 
use. The command, "Be ye wise as serpents, 
harmless as doves," is the ultimate expression of 
this principle, misunderstood usually because the 
word "wise" is referred to the intellectual power 
instead of the subtlety of the serpent. The ser- 
pent has very little intellectual power, but ac- 
cording to that which it has, it is yet, as of old, 
the subtlest of the beasts of the field. 

Another great sign of vulgarity is also, when 
traced to its root, another phase of insensibility. 



224 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

namely, the undue regard to appearances and 
manners, as in the households of vulgar persons, 
of all stations, and the assumption of behaviour, 
language, or dress unsuited to them, by persons 
in inferior stations of life. I say " undue" re- 
gard to appearances, because in the undueness 
consists, of course, the vulgarity. It is due and 
wise in some sort to care for appearances, in 
another sort undue and unwise. Wherein lies 
the difference? 

At first one is apt to answer quickly: the 
vulgarity is simply in pretending to be what you 
are not. But that answer will not stand. A 
queen may dress like a waiting-maid, — perhaps 
succeed, if she chooses, in passing for one; but 
she will not, therefore, be vulgar; nay, a waiting- 
maid may dress like a queen, and pretend to be 
one, and yet need not be vulgar, unless there is 
inherent vulgarity in her. In Scribe's very 
absurd but very amusing Reine (Twi jour^ a 
milliner's girl sustains the part of a queen for a 
day. She several times amazes and disgusts her 
courtiers by her straightforwardness; and once 
or twice very nearly betrays herself to her maids 
of honour by an unqueenly knowledge of sewing; 
but she is not in the least vulgar, for she is sen- 
sitive, simple, and generous, and a queen could 
be no more. 

Is the vulgarity, then, only in trying to play a 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 22$ 

part you cannot play, so as to be continually de- 
tected? No; a bad amateur actor may be con- 
tinually detected in his part, but yet continually 
detected to be a gentleman: a vulgar regard 
to appearances has nothing in it necessarily 
of hypocrisy. You shall know a man not to be 
a gentleman by the perfect and neat pronuncia- 
tion of his words: but he does not pretend to 
pronounce accurately; he does pronounce ac- 
curately, the vulgarity is in the real (not assumed) 
scrupulousness. 

It will be found on farther thought, that 
a vulgar regard for appearances is, primarily, a 
selfish one, resulting, not out of a wish to give 
pleasure (as a wife's wish to make herself beau- 
tiful for her husband), but out of an endeavour 
to mortify others, or attract for pride's sake; — 
the common "keeping up appearances" of 
society, being a mere selfish struggle of the vain 
with the vain. But the deepest stain of the 
vulgarity depends on this being done, not self- 
ishly only, but stupidly, without understanding 
the impression which is really produced, nor the 
relations of importance between oneself and 
others, so as to suppose that their attention is 
fixed upon us, when we are in reality cyphers in 
their eyes — all which comes of insensibility. 
Hence pride simple is not vulgar (the looking 
down on others because of their true inferiority 



226 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

to us), nor vanity simple (the desire of praise), 
but conceit simple (the attribution to ourselves 
of qualities we have not), is always so. In 
cases of over-studied pronunciation, etc., there 
is insensibility, first, in the person's thinking 
more of himself than of what he is saying; and, 
secondly, in his not having musical fineness 
of ear enough to feel that his talking is uneasy 
and strained. 

Finally, vulgarity is indicated by coarseness of 
language or manners, only so far as this coarse- 
ness has been contracted under circumstances 
not necessarily producing it. The illiterateness 
of a Spanish or Calabrian peasant is not vulgar, 
because they had never an opportunity of acquir- 
ing letters; but the illiterateness of an English 
school-boy is. So again, provincial dialect is 
not vulgar; but cockney dialect, the corruption, 
by blunted sense, of a finer language continually 
heard, is so in a deep degree; and again, of this 
corrupted dialect, the worst which consists, not 
in the direct or expressive alteration of the form 
of a word, but in an unmusical destruction of it 
by dead utterance and bad or swollen formation 
of lip. There is no vulgarity in — 

" Blythe, blythe, blythe was she, 
Blythe was she, but and ben, 
And weel she liked a Hawick gill, 
And leugh to see a tappit hen;" 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 22/ 

but much in Mrs. Gamp's inarticulate " bottle 
on the chumley-piece, and let me put my lips to 
it when I am so dispoged." 

So also of personal defects, those only are 
vulgar which imply insensibility or dissipation. 

There is no vulgarity in the emaciation of 
Don Quixote, the deformity of the Black Dwarf, 
or the corpulence of Falstaff; but much in the 
same personal characters as they are seen in 
Uriah Heep, Quilp, and Chadband. 

Disorder in a drawing-room is vulgar; in an 
antiquary's study, not; the black battle-stain on 
a soldier's face is not vulgar, but the dirty face 
of a housemaid is. 

And lastly, courage, so far as it is a sign of 
race, is peculiarly the mark of a gentleman or a 
lady: but it becomes vulgar if rude or insensi- 
tive, while timidity is not vulgar, if it be a char- 
acteristic of race or fineness of make. A fawn 
is not vulgar in being timid, nor a crocodile " gen- 
tle" because courageous. 



VIRTUES SQUARED AND COUNTED. 

It was not possible to measure the waves of 
the water of life, but it was perfectly possible to 
measure the bricks of the Tower of Babel; and 



228 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

gradually, as the thoughts of men were with- 
drawn from their Redeemer, and fixed upon 
themselves, the virtues began to be squared, and 
counted, and classified, and put into separate 
heaps of firsts and seconds; some things being 
virtuous cardinally, and other things virtuous 
only north-north-west. It is very curious to put 
in close juxtaposition the words of the Apostles 
and of som.e of the writers of the fifteenth cen- 
tury touching sanctification. For instance, hear 
first St. Paul to the Thessalonians: "The very 
God of peace sanctify you wholly: and I pray 
God your whole spirit and soul and body be 
preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord 
Jesus Christ. Faithful is he that calleth you, 
who also will do it." And then the following 
part of a prayer which I translate from a MS. of 
the fifteenth century: " May He (the Holy 
Spirit) govern the five Senses of my body; may 
He cause me to embrace the Seven Works of 
Mercy, and firmly to believe and observe the 
Twelve Articles of the Faith and the Ten Com- 
mandments of the Law, and defend me from 
the Seven Mortal Sins, even to the end." 

This tendency, as it affected Christian ethics, 
was confirmed by the Renaissance enthusiasm 
for the works of Aristotle and Cicero, from 
whom the code of the fifteenth century virtues 
was borrowed, and whose authority was then 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 229 

infinitely more revered by all the Doctors of the 
Church than that either of St. Paul or St. Peter. 

Although, however, this change in the tone of 
the Christian mind was most distinctly mani- 
fested when the revival of literature rendered 
the works of the heathen philosophers the lead- 
ing study of all the greatest scholars of the pe- 
riod, it kad been, as I said before, taking place 
gradually from the earliest ages. It is, as far as 
I know, that root of the Renaissance poison- 
tree, which, of all others, is deepest struck; 
showing itself in various measures through the 
writings of all the Fathers, of course exactly in 
proportion to the respect which they paid to 
classical authors, especially to Plato, Aristotle, 
and Cicero. The mode in which the pestilent 
study of that literature affected them may be 
well illustrated by the examination of a single 
passage from the works of one of the best of 
them, St. Ambrose, and of the mode in which 
that passage was then amplified and formulized 
by later writers. 

Plato, indeed, studied alone, would have done 
no one any harm. He is profoundly spiritual 
and capacious in all his views, and embraces the 
small systems of Aristotle and Cicero, as the 
solar system does the Earth. He seems to me 
especially remarkable for the sense of the great 
Christian virtue of Holiness, or sanctification; 



230 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

and for the sense of the presence of the Deity 
in all things, great or small, which always runs 
in a solemn undercurrent beneath his exquisite 
playfulness and irony; while all the merely 
moral virtues may be found in his writings de- 
fined in the most noble manner, as a great 
painter defines his figures, without outlines. But 
the imperfect scholarship of later ages seems to 
have gone to Plato, only to find in him the sys- 
tem of Cicero; which indeed was very definitely 
expressed by him. For it having been quickly 
felt by all men who strove, unhelped by Chris- 
tian faith, to enter at the strait gate into the 
paths of virtue, that there were four characters 
of mind which were protective or preservative 
of all that was best in man, namely. Prudence, 
Justice, Courage, and Temperance,* these were 
afterwards, with most illogical inaccuracy, called 
cardinal virtues., Prudence being evidently no 
virtue, but an intellectual gift: but this inaccu- 
racy arose partly from the ambiguous sense of 
the Latin word " virtutes," which sometimes, -in 
mediaeval language, signifies virtues, sometimes 
powers (being occasionally used in the Vulgate 

*This arrangement of the cardinal virtues is said to 
have been first made by Archytas. See D'Ancarville's 
illustration of the three figures of Prudence, Fortitude, and 
Charity, in Selvatico's " Cappellina degli Scrovegni," 
Padua, 1836. 



PRECIOUS Til OUGHTS. 23! 

for the word " hosts," as m Psahii ciii. 21, cxlviii. 
2, etc., while " fortitudines" and " exercitus" are 
used for the same word in other places), so that 
Prudence might properly be styled a power, 
though not properly a virtue; and partly from 
the confusion of Prudence with Heavenly Wis- 
dom. The real rank of these four virtues, if so 
they are to be called, is however properly ex- 
pressed by the term " cardinal." They are vir- 
tues of the compass, those by which all others 
are directed and strengthened; they are not the 
greatest virtues, but the restraining or modify- 
ing virtues; thus Prudence restrains zeal. Jus- 
tice restrains mercy. Fortitude and Temperance 
guide the entire system of the passions; and, 
thus understood, these virtues properly assumed 
their peculiar leading or guiding position in 
the system of Christian ethics. But in Pagan 
ethics, they were not only guiding, but compre- 
hensive. They meant a great deal more on the 
lips of the ancients, than they now express to 
the Christian mind. Cicero's Justice includes 
charity, beneficence, and benignity, truth, and 
faith in the sense of trustworthiness. His For- 
titude includes courage, self-command, the scorn 
of fortune and of all temporary felicities. His 
Temperance includes courtesy and modesty. So 
also, in Plato, these four virtues constitute the 
sum of education. I do not remember any more 



232 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

simple or perfect expression of the idea, than in 
the account given by Socrates, in the " Alcibiades 
I.," of the education of the Persian kings, for 
whom, in their youth, there are chosen, he says, 
four tutors from among the Persian nobles; 
namely, the Wisest, the most Just, the most 
Temperate, and the most Brave of them. Then 
each has a distinct duty: " the Wisest teaches 
the young king the worship of the gods, and the 
duties of a king (something more here, observe, 
than our * Prudence!'); the most Just teaches 
him to speak all truth, and to act out all truth, 
through the whole course of his life; the most 
Temperate teaches him to allow no pleasure to 
have the mastery of him, so that he may be 
truly free, and indeed a king; and the most 
Brave makes him fearless of all things, showing 
him that the moment he fears anything, he be- 
comes a slave." 

All this is exceedingly beautiful, so far as it 
reaches; but the Christian divines were griev- 
ously led astray by their endeavours to reconcile 
this system with the nobler law of love. At first, 
as in the passage I am just going to quote from 
St. Ambrose, they tried to graft the Christian 
system on the four branches of the Pagan one; 
but finding that the tree would not grow, they 
planted the Pagan and Christian branches side 
by side; adding, to the four cardinal virtues, the 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 233 

three called by the schoolmen tlieological, 
namely, Faith, Hope, and Charity: the one 
series considered as attainable by the Heathen, 
but the other by the Christian only. Thus 
Virgil to Sordello: 

' • Loco e laggiu, non trislo da martiri 
Ma di tenebre solo, ove i lamenti 
Non suonafi come guai, ma son sospiri 

Quivi sto io, con quel che le tre sante 
Virtii non si vestiro, e senza vizio 
Conobber 1' altre, e seguir, tutte quante." 

" There I with those abide 

Who the Three Holy Virtues put not on, 
But understood the rest, and witb'^ut blame 
Followed them all." 

Gary. 

This arrangement of the virtues was, however, 
productive of infinite confusion and error: in 
the first place, because Faith is classed with its 
own fruits, — the gift of God, which is the root 
of the virtues, classed simply as one of them; in 
the second, because the words used by the 
ancients to express the several virtues had always 
a different meaning from the same expressions in 
the Bible, sometimes a more extended, some- 
times a more limited one. Imagine, for instance, 
the confusion which must have been introduced 
into the ideas of a student who read St. Paul and 
Aristotle alternately; considering that the word 



2^4 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS, 

which the Greek writer uses for Justice, means, 
with St. Paul, Righteousness. And lastly, it 
is impossible to overrate the mischief produced 
in former days, as well as in our own, by the 
mere habit of reading Aristotle, whose system is 
so false, so forced, and so confused, that the 
study of it at our universities is quite enough to 
occasion the utter want of accurate habits of 
thought which so often disgraces men otherwise 
well-educated. In a word, Aristotle mistakes 
the Prudence or Temperance which must regu- 
late the operation of the virtues, for the essence 
of the virtues themselves; and, striving to show 
that all virtues are means between two opposite 
vices, torments his wit to discover and dis- 
tinguish as many pairs of vices as are necessary 
to the completion of his system, not disdaining 
to employ sophistry where invention fails him. 

And, indeed, the study^ of classical literature, 
in general, not only fostered in the Christian 
writers the unfortunate love of systematizing, 
which gradually degenerated into every species; 
of contemptible formulism, but it accustomed 
them to work out their systems by the help of 
any logical quibble, or verbal subtlety, which 
could be made available for their purpose, and 
this not with any dishonest intention, but in a 
sincere desire to arrange their ideas in systemati- 
cal groups, while yet their powers of thought 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 235 

were not accurate enough, nor their common 
sense stern enough, to detect the fallacy, or 
disdain the finesse, by which these arrangements 
were frequently accomplished. 

Thus St. Ambrose, in his commentary on 
Luke vi. 20, is resolved to transform the four 
Beatitudes there described into rewards of the 
four cardinal Virtues, and sets himself thus 
ingeniously to the task: 

" 'Blessed be ye poor.' Here you have Tem- 
perance. ' Blessed are ye that hunger now.' 
He who hungers, pities those who are an-hun- 
gered; in pitying, he gives to them, and in 
giving he becomes just (largiendo fit Justus). 
' Blessed are ye that weep now, for ye shall 
laugh.' Here you have Prudence, whose part it 
is to weep, so far as present things are concerned, 
and to seek things which are eternal. 'Blessed 
are ye when men shall hate you.' Here you 
have Fortitude." 

As a preparation for this profitable exercise of 
wit, we have also a reconciliation of the Beati- 
tudes as stated by St. Matthew, with those 
of St. Luke, on the ground that " in those eight 
are these four, and in these four are those 
eight;" with sundry remarks on the mystical 
value of the number eight, with which I need 
not trouble the reader. With St. Ambrose, 
however, this puerile systematization is quite 



236 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

subordinate to a very forcible and truthful ex- 
position of the real nature of the Christian life. 
But the classification he employs furnishes 
ground for farther subtleties to future divines; 
and in a MS. of the thirteenth century I find 
some expressions in this commentary on St. 
Luke, and in the treatise on the duties of 
bishops, amplified into a treatise on the " Steps 
of the Virtues: by which every one v/ho perse- 
veres may, by a straight path, attain to the 
heavenly country of the Angels." (" Liber de 
Gradibus Virtutum: quibus ad patriam angelo- 
rum supernam itinere recto ascenditur ab omni 
perseverante.") These Steps are thirty in num- 
ber (one expressly for each day of the month), 
and the curious mode of their association ren- 
ders the list well. worth quoting: — 



Primus gradus 


est Fides Recta. 


Unerring faith. 


Secundus 


" 


Spes firma. 


Firm hope. 


Tertius 


" 


Caritas perfecta. 


Perfect charity. 


4 


" 


Patientia vera. 


True patience. 


5 


<< 


Humilitas sancta. 


Holy humility. 


6 


" 


Mansuetudo. 


Meekness. 


7 


<( 


Intelligentia. 


Understanding. 


8 


(( 


Compunctio cor- 
dis 


Contrition of heart 


9 


(( 


Oratio. 


Prayer. 


10 


" 


Confessio pura. 


Pure confession. 


II 


" 


Penitentia digna. 


Fitting penance.* 



* Or Penitence : but I rather think this is understood 
only in Compunctio cordis. 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 



237 



12 


gradus 


est Abstinentia. 


Abstinence (fasting). 


13 


<< 


Timor Dei 


Fear of God. 


14 


(( 


Virginitas. 


Virginity. 


15 


" 


Justicia. 


Justice. 


16 


" 


Misericord ia. 


Mercy. 


17 


<i 


Elemosina. 


Almsgiving. 


18 


" 


Hospitalitas. 


Hospitality. 


19 




Honor paren- 
tum. 


Honouring of parents 


20 


« 


Silencium. 


Silence. 


21 


'* 


Consilium bo- 
num. 


Good counsel. 


22 


" 


Judicium rectum. 


Right judgment. 


23 


<< 


Exemplum bo- 
num. 


Good example. 


24 


'* 


Visitatio infirmo- 
rum. 


Visitation of the sick. 


25 


<( 


Frequentatio 


Companying with 






sanctorum 


saints. 


26 


" 


Oblatio justa. 


Just oblations. 


27 


<i 


Decimas Deo 
solvere. 


Paying tithes to God. 


28 


«• 


Sapientia. 


Wisdom. 


29 


<< 


Voluntas bona. 


Goodwill. 


30 


<< 


Perseverantia 


Perseverance. 



The reader will note that the general idea of 
Christian virtue embodied in this list is true, ex- 
alted, and beautiful; the points of weakness be- 
ing the confusion of duties with virtues, and the 
vain endeavour to enumerate the various offices 
of charity as so many separate virtues; more 
frequently arranged as seven distinct works of 



238 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

mercy. This general tendency to a morbid ac- 
curacy of classification was associated, in later 
times, with another very important element of 
the Renaissance mind, the love of personifica- 
tion; which appears to have reached its greatest 
vigour in the course of the sixteenth century, 
and is expressed to all future ages, in a consum- 
mate manner, in the poem of Spenser. It is to 
be noted that personification is, in some sort, the 
reverse of symbolism, and is far less noble. 
Symbolism is the setting forth of a great truth 
by an imperfect and inferior sign (as, for in- 
stance, of the hope of the resurrection by the 
form of the phoenix); and it is almost always 
employed by men in their most serious moods of 
faith, rarely in recreation. Men who use sym- 
bolism forcibly are almost always true believers 
in what they symbolize. But Personification is 
the bestowing of a human or living form upon 
an abstract idea: it is, in most cases, a mere re- 
creation of the fancy, and is apt to disturb the 
belief in the reality of the thing personified. 
Thus symbolism constituted the entire system 
of the Mosaic dispensation: it occurs in every 
word of Christ's teaching; it attaches perpetual 
mystery to the last and most solemn act of His 
life. But I do not recollect a single instance of 
personification in any of his words. And as we 
watch, thenceforward, the history of the Church, 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 239 

we shall find the declension of its faith exactly 
marked by the abandonment of symbolism,* and 
the profuse employment of personification, — 
even to such an extent that the virtues came, at 
last, to be confused with the saints; and we find 
in the later Litanies, St. Faith, St. Hope, St. 
Charity, and St. Chastity, invoked immediately 
after St. Clara and St. Bridget. 

Nevertheless, in the hands of its early and 
earnest masters, in whom fancy could not over- 
throw the foundations of faith, personification is 
often thoroughly noble and lovely; the earlier 
conditions of it being just as much more spiritual 
and vital than the later ones, as the still earlier 
symbolism was more spiritual than they. 



THE CHRISTIAN THEORY OF BEAUTY. 

As it is necessary to the existence of an idea 
of beauty, that the sensual pleasure which may 
be its basis, should be accompanied first with 
joy, then with love of the object, then with the 
perception of kindness in a superior Intelligence, 
finally with thankfulness and veneration towards 

* The transformation of a symbol into a reality, observe, 
as in transubstantiation, is as much an abandonment of 
symbolism as the forgetfulness of symbolic meaning al- 
together. 



240 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

that Intelligence itself, and as no idea can be at 
all considered as in any way an idea of beauty, 
until it be made up of these emotions, any more 
than we can be said to have an idea of a letter 
of which we perceive the perfume and the fair 
writing, without understanding the contents of 
it, or intent of it; and as these emotions are in 
no way resultant from, nor obtainable by, any 
operation of the intellect, it is evident that the 
sensation of beauty is not sensual on the one 
hand, nor is it intellectual on the other, but is 
dependent on a pure, right, and open state of 
the heart, both for its truth and for its intensity, 
insomuch that even the right after action of the 
intellect upon facts of beauty so apprehended, is 
dependent on the acuteness of the heart feeling 
about them; and thus the Apostolic words come 
true, in this minor respect as in all others, that 
men are alienated from the life of God, through 
the ignorance that is in them, having the under- 
standing darkened because of the hardness of 
their hearts, and so being past feeling, give 
themselves up to lasciviousness; for we do in- 
deed see constantly that men having naturally 
acute perceptions of the beautiful, yet not re- 
ceiving it with a pure heart nor into their hearts 
at all, never comprehend it, nor receive good 
from it, but make it a mere minister to their de- 
sires, and accompaniment and seasoning of lower 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 24 1 

sensual pleasures, until all their emotions take 
the same earthly stamp, and the sense of beauty 
sinks into the servant of lust. 

Nor is what the world commonly understands 
by the cultivation of taste, anything more or 
better than this, at least in times of corrupt and 
over-pampered civilization, when men build 
palaces and plant groves and gather luxuries, 
that they and their devices may hang in the cor- 
ners of the world like fine-spun cobwebs, with 
greedy, puffed-up, spider-like lusts in the mid- 
dle. And this, which in Christian times is the 
abuse and corruption of the sense of beauty, was 
in that Pagan life of which St. Paul speaks, lit- 
tle less than the essence of it, and the best they 
had; for I know not that of the expressions of 
affection towards external nature to be found 
among Heathen writers, there are any of which 
the balance and leading thought cleaves not to- 
wards the sensual parts of her. Her beneficence 
they sought, and her power they shunned, her 
teaching through both, they understood never. 
The pleasant influences of soft winds and ring- 
ing streamlets; and shady coverts; of the violet 
couch, and plane-tree shade,* they received, per- 
haps, in a more noble way than we, but they 
found not anything except fear, upon the bare 

* Plato, Phaedrus, § 9. 



242 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

mountain, or in the ghostly glen. The Hybla 
heather they loved more for its sweet hives than 
its purple hues. But the Christian theoria seeks 
not, though it accepts, and touches with its own 
purity, what the Epicurean sought, but fmds its 
food and the objects of its love everywhere, in 
what is harsh and fearful, as well as what is kind, 
nay, even in all that seems coarse and common- 
place; seizing that which is good, and delighting 
more sometimes at finding its table spread in 
strange places, and in the presence of its ene- 
mies, and its honey coming out of the rock, than 
if all were harmonized into a less wondrous 
pleasure; hating only what is self-sighted and 
insolent of men's work, despising all that is not 
of God, unless reminding it of God, yet able to 
find evidence of him still, where all seems for- 
getful of him, and to turn that into a witness of 
his working which was meant to obscure it, and 
so with clear and unoffended sight beholding 
him for ever, according to the written promise, 
— Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall 
see God. 



THE BEST KIND OF LIBERTY. 

Men may be beaten, chained, tormented, 
yoked like cattle, slaughtered like summer flies, 



precious; thoughts. 243 

and yet remain in one sense, and that the best 
sense, free. But to smother their souls within 
them, to make the flesh and skin, which, after 
the worms work on it, is to see God, into leath- 
ern thongs to yoke machinery with — this is to 
be slave-masters indeed ; and there might be 
more freedom in England, though her feudal 
lords' lightest words were worth men's lives, and 
though the blood of the vexed husbandman 
dropped in the furrows of her fields, than there 
is while the animation of her multitudes is sent 
like fuel to feed the factory smoke, and the 
strength of them is given daily to be wasted in 
the fineness of a web, or racked in the exact- 
ness of a line. 

I know not if a day is ever to come when the 
nature of right freedom will be understood, and 
when men will see, that to obey another man, to 
labour for him, yield reverence to him or to his 
place, is not slavery. It is often the best kind 
of liberty, — liberty from care. 



INFLUENCE OF ART ON RELIGION. 

Much attention has lately been directed to 
the subject of religious art, and we are now in 
possession of all kinds of interpretations and 
classifications of it, and of the leading facts of 



244 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

its history. But the greatest question of all 
connected with it remains entirely unanswered, 
What good did it do to real religion? There is 
no subject into which I should so much rejoice 
to see a serious and conscientious inquiry insti- 
tuted as this; an inquiry, neither undertaken in 
artistical enthusiasm nor in monkish sympathy, 
but dogged, merciless, and fearless. I love the 
religious art of Italy as well as most men, but 
there is a wide difference between loving it as a 
manifestation of individual feeling, and looking 
to it as an instrument of popular benefit. I 
have not knowledge enough to form even the 
shadow of an opinion on this latter point, and I 
should be most grateful to any one who would 
put it in my power to do so. There are, as it 
seems to me, three distinct questions to be con- 
sidered: the first. What has been the effect of 
external splendour on the genuineness and ear- 
nestness of Christian worship? the second, What 
the use of pictorial or sculptural representation 
in the communication of Christian historical 
knowledge, or excitement of affectionate im- 
agination? the third, What the influence of the 
practice of religious art on the life of the artist? 
In answering these inquiries, we should have 
to consider separately every collateral influence 
and circumstance; and, by a most subtle analy- 
sis, to eliminate the real effect of art from the 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 245 

effects of the abuses with which it was associated. 
This could be done only by a Christian; not a 
man who would fall in love with a sweet colour 
or sweet expression, but who would look for 
true faith and consistent life as the object of all. 
It never has been done yet, and the question 
remains a subject of vain and endless contention 
between parties of opposite prejudices and tem- 
peraments. 



LOSS. 

There is no subject of thought more melan- 
choly, more wonderful, than the way in which 
God permits so often His best gifts to be trodden 
under foot of men. His richest treasures to be 
wasted by the moth, and the mightiest influi? 
ences of His Spirit, given but once in the world's 
history, to be quenched and shortened by mis- 
eries of chance and guilt. I do not wonder at 
what men Suffer, but I wonder often at what 
they Lose. We may see how good rises out of 
pain and evil; but the dead, naked, eyeless loss, 
what good comes of that? The fruit struck to 
the earth before its ripeness; the glowing life and 
goodly purpose dissolved away in sudden death; 
the words, half spoken, choked upon the lips 
with clay for ever; or, stranger than all, the 



246 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

whole majesty of humanity raised to its fulness, 
and every gift and power necessary for a given 
purpose, at a given moment, centred in one 
man, and all this perfected blessing permitted to 
be refused, perverted, crushed, cast aside by 
those who need it most, — the city which is Not 
set on a hill, the candle that giveth light to 
None that are in the house: — these are the 
heaviest mysteries of this strange world, and, it 
seems to me, those which mark its curse the 
most. 



MRS. BROWNING S APPEAL FOR ITALY. 

I have seen, when the thunderclouds came 
down on those Italian hills, and all their crags 
were dipped in the dark, terrible purple, as if the 
winepress of the wrath of God had stained their 
mountain-raiment — I have seen the hail fall in 
Italy till the forest branches stood stripped and 
bare as if blasted by the locust; but the white 
hail never fell from those clouds of heaven as 
the black hail will fall from the clouds of hell, 
if ever one breath of Italian life stirs again in 
the streets of Verona. 

Sad as you will feel this to be, I do not say 
that you can directly prevent it; you cannot 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 24/ 

drive the Austrians out of Italy, nor prevent 
them from building forts where they choose.* 

* The reader can hardly but remember Mrs. Brown- 
ing's beautiful appeal for Italy made on the occasion of 
the first great Exhibition of Art in England: — 
O Magi of the east and of the west, 
Your incense, gold, and myrrh are excellent ! — 
What gifts for Christ, then, bring ye with the rest ? 
Your hands have worked well. Is your courage spent 
In handwork only? Have you nothing best, 
Which generous souls may perfect and present. 
And He shall thank the givers for ? no light 
Of teaching, liberal nations, for the poor, 
Who sit in darkness when it is not night ? 
No cure for wicked children? Christ, — no cure, 
No help for women, sobbing out of sight 
. Because men made the laws? — no brothel-lure 
Burnt out by popular lightnings ? Hast thou found 
No remedy, my England, for such woes ? 
No outlet, Austria, for the scourged and bound, 
No call back for the exiled ? no repose, 
Russia, for knouted Poles worked under ground, 
And gentle ladies bleached among the snows ? 
No mercy for the slave, America? 
No hope for Rome, free France, chivalric France? 
Alas, great nations have great shames, I say. 
No pity, O world ! no tender utterance 
Of benediction, and prayers stretched this way 
For poor Italia, baffled by mischance ? 
O gracious nations, give some ear to me ! 
You all go to your Fair, and I am one 
Who at the roadside of humanity 
Beseech your alms, — God's justice to be done, 
So prosper ! 



243 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS, 



DANTE AND SPENSER. 

By the form or name of opposed vice, we may 
often ascertain, with much greater accuracy than 
would otherwise be possible, the particular idea 
of the contrary virtue in the mind of the writer 
or painter. Thus, when opposed to Prudence, 
or Prudentia, on the one side, we find Folly, or 
Stultitia, on the other, it shows that the virtue 
understood by Prudence, is not the mere guiding 
or cardinal virtue, but the Heavenly Wisdom,* 
opposed to that folly which " hath said in its 
heart, there is no God;" and of which it is said, 
" the thought of foolishness is sin;" and again, 
" Such as be foolish shall not stand in thy sight." 
This folly is personified, in early painting and 
illumination, by a half-naked man, greedily eating 
an apple or other fruit, and brandishing a club; 
showing that sensuality and violence are the two 
principal characteristics of Foolishness, and lead 
into atheism. The figure, in early Psalters, al- 
ways forms the letter D, which commences the 
fifty-third Psalm, '''' Dixit insipiens'' 

In reading Dante, this mode of reasoning from 
contraries is a great help, for his philosophy of 
the vices is the only one which admits of classi- 

* Uniting the three ideas expressed by the Greek philos- 
ophers under the terms (ppovijai'i aocpia, and e7n<T- 
Trffj.rj; and part of the idea of oroacppoavvi^ 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 249 

fication; his descriptions of virtue, while they 
include the ordinary formal divisions, are far too 
profound and extended to be brought under 
definition. Every line of the " Paradise" is full 
of the most exquisite and spiritual expressions 
of Christian truth; and that poem is only less 
read than the " Inferno" because it requires far 
greater attention, and, perhaps, for its full enjoy- 
ment, a holier heart. 

His system in the " Inferno" is briefly this. 
The whole nether world is divided into seven 
circles, deep within deep, in each of which, ac- 
cording to its depth, severer punishment is in- 
flicted. These seven circles, reckoning them 
downwards, are thus allotted: 

1. To those who have lived virtuously, but 
knew not Christ. 

2. To Lust. 

3. To Gluttony. 

4. To Avarice and Extravagance. 

5. To Anger and Sorrow. 

6. To Heresy. 

7. To Violence and Fraud. 

This seventh circle is divided into two parts; of 
which the first, reserved for those who have been 
guilty of Violence, is again divided into three, 
apportioned severally to those who have com- 
mitted, or desire to commit, violence against 



250 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

their neighbours, against themselves, or against 
God. 

The lowest hell, reserved for the punishment 
of Fraud, is itself divided into ten circles, where- 
in are severally punished the sins of, — 



I. 


Betraying women. 






2. 


Flattery. 






3. 


Simony. 






4. 


False prophecy. 






5- 


Peculation. 






6. 


Hypocrisy. 






7- 


Theft. 






8. 


False counsel. 






9- 


Schism and Imposture. 






10. 


Treachery to those who 


repose 


entire trust 


in the traitor. 







There is, perhaps, nothing more notable in 
this most interesting system than the profound 
truth couched under the attachment of so 
terrible a penalty to sadness or sorrow. It is 
true that Idleness does not elsewhere appear in 
the scheme, and is evidently intended to be in- 
cluded in the guilt of sadness by the word 
"accidioso;" but the main meaning of the poet 
is to mark the duty of rejoicing in God, accord- 
ing both to St. Paul's command, and Isaiah's 
promise, " Thou meetest him that rejoiceth and 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 25 I 

worketh righteousness." * I do not know words 
that might with more benefit be borne with us, 
and set in our hearts momentarily against the 
minor regrets and rebelliousnesses of life, than 
these simple ones: 

" Tristi fummo 
Nel aer dolce, che del sol s' allegra. 
Or ci attristiam, nella belletta negra." 

" We once were sad, 
In the sweet air, made gladsome by the sun, 
Now in these murky settlings are we sad."f Cary. 

The virtue usually opposed to this vice of 
sullenness is Alacritas, uniting the sense of activ- 
ity and cheerfulness. Spenser has cheerfulness 
simply, in his description, never enough to be 
loved or praised, of the virtues of Womanhood, 
first, feminineness or womanhood in specialty; 
then, — 

'• Next to her sate goodly Shamefastnesse, 
Ne ever durst her eyes from ground upreare, 
Ne ever once did looke up from herdesse,^ 

* Isa. Ixiv. 5. 

f I hardly think it necessary to point out to the 
reader the association between sacred cheerfulness and 
solemn thought, or to explain any appearance of contra- 
diction between passages in which I have had to oppose 
sacred pensiveness to unholy mirth, and those in which I 
have to oppose sacred cheerfulness to unholy sorrow. 

X " Desse," seat. 



2^2 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

As if some blame of evill she did feare 
That in her cheekes made roses oft appeare : 
And her against sweet Cherefulnesse was placed. 
Whose eyes, like twinkling stars in evening cleare, 
Were deckt with smyles that all sad humours chacea. 

• *' And next to her sate sober Modestie, 
Holding her hand upon her gentle hart; 
And her against, sate comely Curtesie, 
That Jinto every person knew her part; 
And her before was seated overthwart 
Soft Silence, and Submisse Obedience, 
Both linckt together never to dispart," 

Another notable point in Dante's system is the 
intensity of uttermost punishment given to trea- 
son, the peculiar sin of Italy, and that to which, 
at this day, she attributes her own misery with 
her own lips. An Italian, questioned as to the 
causes of the failure of the campaign of 1848, 
always makes one answer, "We were betrayed;" 
and the most melancholy feature of the present 
state of Italy is principally this, that she does 
not see that, of all causes to which failure might 
be attributed, this is at once the most disgrace- 
ful, and the most hopeless. In fact, Dante seems 
to me to have written almost prophetically, for 
the instruction of modern Italy, and chiefly so in 
the sixth canto of the " Purgatorio." 

The system of Spenser is unfinished, and ex- 
ceedingly complicated, the same vices and vir- 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 253 

tues occurring under different forms in different 
places, in order to show their different relations 
to each other. I shall not therefore give any- 
general sketch of it, but only refer to the particu- 
lar personification of each virtue.* The peculiar 
superiority of his system is in its exquisite setting 
forth of Chastity under the figure of Britomart; 
not monkish chastity, but that of the purest Love. 
In completeness of personification no one can 
approach him; not even in Dante do I remember 
anything quite so great as the description of the 
Captain of the Lusts of the Flesh: 

"As pale and wan as ashes was his looke; 

His body lean and meagre as a rake; 

And skin all withered like a dryed rooke ; 

Thereto as cold and drery as a snake ; 

That seemed to tremble evermore, and quake: 

All in a canvas thin he was bedight. 

And girded with a belt of twisted brake : 

Upon his head he wore an helmet light, 

Made of a dead mans skull." 

He rides upon a tiger, and in his hand is a bow, 
bent; 

" And many arrows under his right side, 
Headed with flint, and fethers bloody dide." 

*The "Faerie Queen," like Dante's "Paradise," is 
only half estimated, because few persons take the pains to 
think out its meaning. No time devoted to profane litera- 
ture will be better rewarded than that spent earnestly on 
Spenser. 



254 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

The horror and the truth of this are beyond 
everything that I know, out of the pages of In- 
spiration. Note the heading of the arrows with 
flint, because sharper and more subtle in the 
edge than steel, and because steel might con- 
sume away with rust, but flint not; and consider 
in the whole description how the wasting away 
of body and soul together, and the coldness of 
the heart, which unholy fire has consumed into 
ashes, and the loss of all power, and the kindling 
of all terrible impatience, and the implanting of 
thorny and inextricable griefs, are set forth by the 
various images, the belt of brake, the tiger steed, 
and the light helmet, girding the head with death. 

Spenser's Faith (Fidelia) is spiritual and noble: 

**She was araied all in Hlly white, 

And in her right hand bore a cup of gold, 

With wine and water fild up to the hight. 

In which a serpent did himselfe enfold, 

That horrour made to all that did behold ; 

But she no whitt did chaunge her constant mood: 

And in her other hand she fast did hold 

A booke, that was both signd and seald with blood; 

Wherein darke things were writt, hard to be understood." 

Spenser's Gluttony is more than usually fine: 

" His belly was upblowne with luxury. 

And eke with fatnesse swollen were his eyne, 
And like a crane his necke was long and fyne, 
Wherewith he swallowed up excessive feast, 
For want whereof poore people oft did pyne." 



PREVIOUS THOUGHTS. 255 

The Envy of Spenser is fine; joining the idea 
of fury, in the wolf on which he rides, with that 
of corruption on his lips, and of discolouration or 
distortion in the whole mind: 

" Malicious Envy rode 
Upon a ravenous wolfe, and still did chaw 
Between his cankred teeth a venemous tode. 
That all the poison ran about his jaw. 
All in a kirtle of discolourd say 
He clothed was, ypaynted full ofeies, 
And in his bosome secretly there lay 
An hatefull snake, the which his taile uptyes 
In many folds, and mortall sting implyes." 

Spenser has analysed this vice (Pride) with 
great care. He first represents it as the Pride of 
life; that is to say, the pride which runs in a deep 
under current through all the thoughts and acts 
of men. As such, it is a feminine vice, directly 
opposed to Holiness, and mistress of a castle 
called the House of Pryde, and her chariot is 
driven by Satan, with a team of beasts, ridden by 
the mortal sins. In the throne chamber of her 
palace she is thus described: 

" So proud she shyned in her princely state. 
Looking to Heaven, for Earth she did disdayne; 
And sitting high, for lowly she did hate: 
Lo, underneath her scornefull feete was layne 
A dreadfuU dragon with an hideous trayne; 
And in her hand she held a mirrhour bright, 
Wherein her face she often vewed fayne." 



256 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 



KNOWING AND DOING. 

Some years ago, in conversation with an artist 
whose works, perhaps, alone, in the present day, 
unite perfection of drawing with resplendence of 
colour, the writer made some inquiry respecting 
the general means by which this latter quality 
was most easily to be attained. The reply was 
as concise as it was comprehensive — " Know 
what you have to do, and do it " — comprehen- 
sive, not only as regarded the branch of art to 
which it temporarily applied, but as expressing 
the great principle of success in every direction 
of human effort; for I believe that failure is less 
frequently attributable to either insufficiency of 
means or impatience of labour, than to a con- 
fused understanding of the thing actually to be 
done; and therefore, while it is properly a sub- 
ject of ridicule, and sometimes of blame, that men 
propose to themselves a perfection of any kind, 
which reason, temperately consulted, might have 
shown to be impossible with the means at their 
command, it is a more dangerous error to permit 
the consideration of means to interfere with our 
conception, or, as is not impossible, even hinder 
our acknowledgment of goodness and perfection 
in themselves. And this is the more cautiously 
to be remembered; because, while a man's sense 
and conscience, aided by Revelation, are always 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 257 

enough, if earnestly directed, to enable him to 
discover what is right, neither his sense, nor con- 
science, nor feeling, are ever enough, because 
they are not intended, to determine for him what 
is possible. He knows neither his own strength, 
nor that of his fellows, neither the exact depend- 
ence to be placed on his allies nor resistance to 
be expected from his opponents. These are 
questions respecting which passion may warp his 
conclusions, and ignorance must limit them; but 
it is his own fault if either interfere with the ap- 
prehension of duty, or the acknowledgment of 
right. And, as far as I have taken cognizance of 
the causes of the many failures to which the ef- 
forts of intelligent men are liable, more especially 
in matters political, they seem to me more largely 
to spring from this single error than from all 
others, that the inquiry into the doubtful, and in 
some sort inexplicable, relations of capability, 
chance, resistance, and inconvenience, invariably 
precedes, even if it do not altogether supersede, 
the determination of what is absolutely desirable 
and just. Nor is it any wonder that sometimes 
the too cold calculation of our powers should 
reconcile us too easily to our shortcomings, and 
even lead us into the fatal error of supposing 
that our conjectural utmost is in itself well, or, 
in other words, that the necessity of offences 
renders them inoffensive. 



258 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

THE POWER OF INTELLECT. 

The temperament which admits the pathetic 
fallacy is that of a mind and body in some sort 
too weak to deal fully with what is before them 
or upon them; borne away, or over-clouded, 
or over-dazzled by emotion; and it is a more or 
less noble state, according to the force of the 
emotion which has induced it. For it is no 
credit to a man that he is not morbid or inac- 
curate in his perceptions, when he has no 
strength of feeling to warp them; and it is 
in general a sign of higher capacity and stand in 
the ranks of being, that the emotions should be 
strong enough to vanquish, partly, the intellect, 
and make it believe what they choose. But it is 
still a grander condition when the intellect also 
rises, till it is strong enough to assert its rule 
against, or together with, the utmost efforts 
of the passions; and the whole man stands in an 
iron glow, white hot, perhaps, but still strong, 
and in no wise evaporating; even if he melts, 
losing none of his weight. 

So, then, we have the three ranks: the man who 
perceives rightly, because he does not feel, and 
to whom the primrose is very accurately the 
primrose, because he does not love it. Then, 
secondly, the man who perceives wrongly, be- 
cause he feels, and to whom the primrose is any- 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 259 

thing else than a primrose: a star, or a sun, or 
a fairy's shield, or a forsaken maiden. 



VOLUNTARILY ADMITTED RESTRAINTS. 

The highest greatness and the highest wisdom 
are shown, the first by a noble submission to, the 
second by a thoughtful providence for, certain 
voluntarily admitted restraints. Nothing is more 
evident than this, in that supreme government 
which is the example, as it is the centre of all 
others. The Divine Wisdom is, and can be, 
shown to us only in its meeting and contending 
with the difficulties which are voluntarily, and 
for the sake of that contest, admitted by the 
Divine Omnipotence: and these difficulties, 
observe, occur in the form of natural laws or 
ordinances which might, at many times and in 
countless ways, be infringed with apparent ad- 
vantage, but which are never infringed, whatever 
costly arrangements or adaptations their observ- 
ance may necessitate for the accomplishment of 
given purposes. The example most apposite to 
our present subject is the structure of the bones 
of animals. No reason can be given, I believe, 
why the system of the higher animals should not 
have been made capable, as that of the Infu- 
soria is, of secreting flint, instead of phosphate of 



26o PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

lime, or more naturally still, carbon; so framing 
the bones of adamant at once. The elephant or 
rhinoceros, had the earthy part of their bones 
been made of diamond, might have been as agile 
and light as grasshoppers, and other animals 
might have been framed far more magnificently 
colossal than any that walk the earth. In other 
worlds we may, perhaps, see such creations; a 
creation for every element, and elements infinite. 
But the architecture of animals here^ is appointed 
by God to be a marble architecture, not a flint 
nor adamant architecture; and all manner of 
expedients are adopted to attain the utmost 
degree of strength and size possible under that 
great limitation. The jaw of the ichthyosaurus 
is pieced and riveted, the leg of the megatherium 
is a foot thick, and the head of the myodon has 
a double skull; we, in our wisdom, should, 
doubtless^ have given the lizard a steel jaw, and 
the myodon a cast-iron head-piece, and forgot- 
ten the great principle to which all creation 
bears witness, that order and system are nobler 
things than power. But God shows us in Him- 
self, strange as it may seem, not only authorita- 
tive perfection, but even the perfection of Obe- 
dience — an obedience to His own laws: and in 
the cumbrous movement of those unwieldiest of 
His creatures we are reminded, even in His 
divine essence, of that attribute of uprightness in 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 26 1 

the human creature "that sweareth to his own 
hurt and changeth not." 



PROGRESS IN KNOWLEDGE. 

If we consider that, till within the last fifty 
years, the nature of the ground we tread on, of 
the air we breathe, and of the light by which we 
see, were not so much as conjecturally con- 
ceived by us; that the duration of the globe, and 
the races of animal life by which it was inhab- 
ited, are just beginning to be apprehended; and 
that the scope of the magnificent science which 
has revealed them, is as yet so little received by 
the public mind, that presumption and ignorance 
are still permitted to raise their voices against it 
unrebuked; that perfect veracity in the repre- 
sentation of general nature by art has never been 
attempted until the present day, and has in the 
present day been resisted with all the energy of 
the popular voice;* that the simplest problems 
of social science are yet so little understood, as 
that doctrines of liberty and equality can be 
openly preached, and so successfully as to affect 
the whole body of the civilized world with 
apparently incurable disease; that the first prin- 

* In the works of Turner and the Pre-Raphaclites 



262 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

ciples of commerce were acknowledged by the 
English Parliament only a few months ago, in its 
free-trade measures, and are still so little under- 
stood by the million, that no nation dares to 
abolish its custom-houses;* that the simplest 
principles of policy are still not so much as 
stated, far less received, and that civilized 
nations persist in the belief that the subtlety 
and dishonesty which they know to be ruinous 
in dealings between man and man, are servicea- 
ble in dealings between multitude and multitude; 
finally, that the scope of the Christian religion, 
which we have been taught for two thousand 
years, is still so little conceived by us, that we 
suppose the laws of charity and of self-sacrifice 

* Observe, I speak of these various principles as self- 
evident, only under the present circumstances of the 
world, not as if they had always been so, and I call them 
now self-evident, not merely because they seem so to my- 
self, but because they are felt to be so likewise by all the 
men in whom I place most trust. But granting that they 
are not so, then their very disputability proves the state of 
infancy above alleged, as characteristic of the world. For 
I do not suppose that any Christian reader will doubt the 
first great truth, that whatever facts or laws are important 
to mankind, God has made ascertainable by mankind ; and 
that as the decision of all these questions is of vital im- 
portance to the race, that decision must have been long 
ago arrived at, unless they were still in a state of child- 
hood. 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 263 

bear upon individuals in all their social rela- 
tions, and yet do not bear upon nations in any 
of their political relations; — when, I say, we 
thus review the depth of simplicity in which the 
human race are still plunged with respect to all 
that it most profoundly concerns them to know, 
and which might, by them, with most ease have 
been ascertained, we can hardly determine how 
far back on the narrow path of human progress 
we ought to place the generation to which we 
l)elong, how far the swaddling clothes are un- 
wound from us, and childish things beginning to 
be put away. 

On the other hand, a power of obtaining 
veracity in the representation of material and 
tangible things, which, within certain limits and 
conditions, is unimpeachable, has now been 
placed in the hands of all men,* almost without 
labour. The foundation of every natural science 
is now at last firmly laid, not a day passing with- 



* I intended to have given a sketch in this place (above 
referred to) of the probable results of the daguerreotype 
and calotype within the next few years, in modifying the 
application of the engraver's art, but I have not had time 
to complete the experiments necessary to enable me to 
speak with certainty. Of one thing, however, I have little 
doubt, that an infinite service will soon be done to a large 
body of our engravers ; namely, the making them 
draughtsmen. 



264 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

out some addition of buttress and pinnacle to 
their already magnificent fabric. Social theo- 
rems, if fiercely agitated, are therefore the more 
likely to be at last determined, so that they 
never can be matters of question more. Human 
life has been in some sense prolonged by the in- 
creased powers of locomotion, and an almost 
limitless power of converse. Finally, there is 
hardly any serious mind in Europe but is occu- 
pied, more or less, in the investigation of the 
questions which have so long paralysed the 
strength of religious feeling, and shortened the 
dominion of religious faith. And we may there- 
fore at least look upon ourselves as so far in a 
definite state of progress, as to justify our cau- 
tion in guarding against the dangers incident to 
every period of change, and especially to that 
from childhood into youth. 

Those dangers appear, in the main, to be two- 
fold; consisting partly in the pride of vain 
knowledge, partly in the pursuit of vain pleasure. 



IGNOBLE EMOTION. 



A Turk declares that " God is great," when he 
means only that he himself is lazy. The " heaven 
is bright " of many vulgar painters, has precisely 
the same amount of signification, it means that 



PRFXIOUS THOUGHTS. 265 

they know nothing — will do nothing — are without 
thought — without care — without passion. They 
will not walk the earth, nor watch the ways of 
it, nor gather the flowers of it. They will sit in 
the shade, and only assert that very perceptible, 
long-ascertained fact, " heaven is bright." And 
as it may be asserted basely, so it may be accepted 
basely. Many of our capacities for receiving 
noblest emotion are abused, in mere idleness, for 
pleasure's sake, and people take the excitement 
of a solemn sensation as they do that of a strong 
drink. Thus the abandoned court of Louis XIV. 
had on fast days its sacred concerts, doubtless 
entering in some degree into the religious ex- 
pression of the music, and thus idle and frivo- 
lous women at the present day will weep at an 
oratorio. 



SACRED ASSOCIATIONS WITH OLIVE-TREES. 

I do not want painters to tell me any scientific 
facts about olive-trees. But it had been well for 
them to have felt and seen the olive-tree; to 
have loved it for Christ's sake, partly also for the 
helmed Wisdom's sake which was to the heathen 
in some sort as that nobler Wisdom which stood 
at God's right hand, when He founded the earth 
and established the heavens. To have loved it, 



266 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

even to the hoary dimness of its delicate foliage, 
subdued and faint of hue, as if the ashes of the 
Gethsemane agony had been cast upon it for 
ever; and to have traced, line by line, the 
gnarled writhing of its intricate branches, and 
the pointed fretwork of its light and narrow 
leaves, inlaid on the blue field of the sky, and 
the small, rosy-white stars of its spring blossom- 
ing, and the beads of sable fruit scattered by 
autumn along its topmost boughs — the right, in 
Israel, of the stranger, the fatherless, and the 
widow, — and, more than all, the softness of the 
mantle, silver grey, and tender like the down on 
a bird's breast, with which, far away, it veils the 
undulation of the mountains. 



SIMPLICITY. 



It Is far more difficult to be simple than to be 
complicated; far more difficult to sacrifice skill 
and cease exertion in the proper place, than to 
expend both indiscriminately. We shall find, in 
the course of our investigation, that beauty and 
difficulty go together; and that they are only 
mean and paltry difficulties which it is wrong or 
contemptible to wrestle with. Be it remembered 
then — Power is never wasted. Whatever power 
has been employed, produces excellence in pro- 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 267 

portion to its own dignity and exertion; and the 
faculty of perceiving this exertion, and appreci- 
ating this dignity, is the faculty of perceiving 
excellence. 



LOVE OF CHANGE. 

We must note carefully what distinction there 
's between a healthy and a diseased love of 
change; for as it was in healthy love of change 
that the Gothic architecture rose, it was partly 
in consequence of diseased love of change that 
it was destroyed. In order to understand this 
clearly, it will be necessary to consider the dif- 
ferent ways in which change and monotony are 
presented to us in nature; both having their use, 
like darkness and light, and the one incapable 
of being enjoyed without the other: change 
being most delightful after some prolongation of 
monotony, as light appears most brilliant after 
the eyes have been for some time closed. 

I believe that the true relations of monotony 
and change may be most simply understood by 
observing them in music. We may therein no- 
tice, first, that there is a sublimity and majesty 
in monotony which there is not in rapid or fre- 
quent variation. This is true throughout all 
nature. The greater part of tlie sublimity of 



268 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

the sea depends on its monotony; so also that 
of desolate moor and mountain scenery; and 
especially the sublimity of motion, as in the 
quiet, unchanged fall and rise of an engine beam. 
So also there is sublimity in darkness which 
there is not in light. 

Again, monotony, after a certain time, or be- 
yond a certain degree, becomes either uninterest- 
ing or intolerable, and the musician is obliged to 
break it in one or two ways: either while the air 
or passage is perpetually repeated, its notes are 
variously enriched and harmonised; or else, 
after a certain number of repeated passages, an 
entirely new passage is introduced, which is more 
or less delightful according to the length of the 
previous monotony. Nature, of course, uses 
both these kinds of variation perpetually. The 
sea-waves, resembling each other in general 
mass, but none like its brother in minor divis- 
ions and curves, are a monotony of the first 
kind; the great plain, broken by an emergent 
rock or clump of trees, is a monotony of the 
second. 

Farther: in order to the enjoyment of the 
change in either case, a certain degree of pa- 
tience is required from the hearer or observer. 
In the first case, he must be satisfied to endure 
with patience the recurrence of the great masses 
of sound or form, and to seek for entertainment 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 269 

in a careful watchfulness of the minor details. 
In the second case, he must bear patiently the 
infliction of the monotony for some moments, 
in order to feel the full refreshment of the 
change. This is true even of the shortest musi- 
cal passage in which the element of monotony 
is employed. In cases of more majestic monot- 
ony, the patience required is so considerable 
that it becomes a kind of pain, — a price paid for 
the future pleasure. 

Again: the talent of the composer Is not in 
the monotony, but in the changes: he may show 
feeling and taste by his use of monotony in cer- 
tain places or degrees; that is to say, by his 
various employment of it; but it is always in the 
new arrangement or invention that his intellect 
is shown, and not in the monotony which re- 
lieves it. 

Lastly: if the pleasure of change be too often 
repeated, it ceases to be delightful, for then 
change itself becomes monotonous, and we are 
driven to seek delight in extreme and fantastic 
degrees of it. This is the diseased love of 
change of which we have above spoken. 

From these facts we may gather generally 
that monotony is, and ought to be, in itself 
painful to us, just as darkness is; that an archi- 
tecture which is altogether monotonous is a 
dark or dead architecture; and, of those who 



270 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

love it, it may be truly said, " they love dark- 
ness rather than light." But monotony in cer- 
tain measure, used in order to give value to 
change, and, above all, that transparent monot- 
ony which, like the shadows of a great painter, 
suffers all manner of dimly suggested form to be 
seen through the body of it, is an essential in 
architectural as in all other composition; and 
the endurance of monotony has about the same 
place in a healthy mind that the endurance of 
darkness has: that is to say, as a strong intellect 
will have pleasure in the solemnities of storm 
and twilight, and in the broken and mysterious 
lights that gleam among them, rather than in 
mere brilliancy and glare, while a frivolous mind 
will dread the shadow and storm; and as a great 
man will be ready to endure much darkness of 
fortune in order to reach greater eminence of 
power or felicity, while an inferior man will not 
pay the price; exactly in like manner a great 
mind will accept, or even delight in, monotony 
which would be wearisome to an inferior intel- 
lect, because it has more patience and power of 
expectation, and is ready to pay the full price 
for the great future pleasure of change. But in 
all cases it is not that the noble nature loves 
monotony, any more than it loves darkness or 
pain. But it can bear with it, and receives a high 
pleasure in the endurance or patience, a pleas- 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 27I 

ure necessary to the well-being of this world^, 
while those who will not submit to the tem- 
porary sameness, but rush from one change to 
another, gradually dull the edge of change itself, 
and bring a shadow and weariness over the 
whole world from which there is no more es- 
cape. 



THE MAN OF GENIUb. 

His science is inexpressibly subtle, directly 
taught him by his Maker, not in anywise com- 
municable or imitable. Neither can any written 
or definitely observable laws enable us to do any 
great thing. It is possible, by measuring and ad- 
ministering quantities of colour, to paint a room 
wall so that it shall not hurt the eye; but there 
are no laws by observing which we can become 
Titians. It is possible so to measure and ad- 
minister syllables, as to construct harmonious 
verse; but there are no laws by which we can 
write Iliads. Out of the poem or the picture, 
once produced, men may elicit laws by the vol- 
ume, and study them with advantage, to the 
better understanding of the existing poem or 
picture; but no more write or paint another, 
than by discovering laws of vegetation they can 
make a tree to grow. And therefore, wheresoever 
we find the system and formality of rules much 



2/2 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

dwelt upon, and spoken of as anything else than 
a help for children, there we may be sure that 
noble art is not even understood, far less reached. 
And thus it was with all the common and pub- 
lic mind in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. 
The greater men, indeed, broke through the 
thorn hedges; and, though much time was lost 
by the learned among them in writing Latin 
verses and anagrams, and arranging the frame- 
work of quaint sonnets and dexterous syllogisms, 
still they tore their way through the sapless 
thicket by force of intellect or of piety; for it 
was not possible that, either in literature or in 
painting, rules could be received by any strong 
mind, so as materially to interfere with its origi- 
nality; and the crabbed discipline and exact 
scholarship became an advantage to the men who 
could pass through and despise them; so that in 
spite of the rules of the drama we had Shake- 
speare, and in spite of the rules of art we had 
Tintoret, — both of them, to this day, doing per- 
petual violence to the vulgar scholarship and 
dim-eyed proprieties of the multitude. 



THE CLASSICAL. 

On the absence of belief in a good supreme 
Being, follows, necessarily, the habit of looking 
to ourselves for supreme judgment in all mat- 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 273 

fers, and for supreme government. Hence, 
first, the irreverent habit of judgment instead of 
admiration. It is generally expressed under the 
justly degrading term " good taste." 

Hence, in the second place, the habit of re- 
straint or self-government (instead of impulsive 
and limitless obedience), based upon pride, and 
involving, for the most part, scorn of the help- 
less and weak, and respect only for the orders of 
men who have been trained to this habit of self- 
government. Whence the title classical, from 
the Latin classicus. 

The school is, therefore, generally to be char- 
acterized as that of taste and restraint. As the 
school of taste, everything is, in its estimation, 
beneath it, so as to be tasted or tested; not 
above it, to be thankfully received. Nothing 
was to be fed upon as bread; but only palated 
as a dainty. This spirit has destroyed art since 
the close of the sixteenth century, and nearly 
destroyed French literature, our English litera- 
ture being at the same time severely depressed, 
and our education (except in bodily strength) 
rendered nearly nugatory by it, so far as it af- 
fects common-place minds. It is not possible 
that the classical spirit should ever take posses- 
sion of a mind of the highest order. Pope is, 
as far as I know, the greatest man who ever fell 
strongly under its influence; and though it 



2/4 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

spoiled half his work, he broke through it contin- 
ually into true enthusiasm and tender thought.* 
Again, as the school of reserve, it refuses to al- 
low itself in any violent or " spasmodic" pas- 
aon; the schools of literature which have been 
in modern times called " spasmodic," being re- 
actionary against it. The word, though an ugly 
one, is quite accurate, the most spasmodic books 
in the world being Solomon's Song, Job, and 
Isaiah. 



THE MOTHER-NATION. 

I believe that no Christian nation has any 
business to see one of its members in distress 
without helping him, though, perhaps, at the 
same time punishing him: help, of course — in 
nine cases out of ten — meaning guidance, much 
more than gift, and, therefore, interference 
with liberty. When a peasant mother sees 
one of her careless children fall into a ditch, 
her first proceeding is to pull him out; her 
second, to box his ears; her third, ordinarily, to 
lead him carefully a little way by the hand, or 

* Cold-hearted, I have called him. He was so in writ- 
ing the Pastorals, of which I then spoke, but in after life 
his errors were those of his time, his wisdom was his own; 
it would be well if we also made it ours. 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 2/5 

send him home for the rest of the day. The 
child usually cries, and very often would clearly 
prefer remaining in the ditch; and if he under- 
stood any of the terms of politics, would certainly 
express resentment at the interference with his 
individual liberty: but the mother has done her 
duty. Whereas the usual call of the mother- 
nation to any of her children, under such circum- 
stances, has lately been nothing more than the 
foxhunter's, — " Stay still there; I shall clear 
you." And if we always could clear them, their 
requests to be left in muddy independence might 
be sometimes allowed by kind people, or their 
cries for help disdained by unkind ones. But 
we can't clear them. The whole nation is, in 
fact, bound together, as men are by ropes on a 
glacier — if one falls, the rest must either lift him 
or drag him along with them as dead weight, not 
without much increase of danger to themselves. 
And the law of right being manifestly in this, as, 
whether manifestly or not, it is always, the law 
of prudence, the only question is, how this whole- 
some help and interference are to be admin- 
istered. 



JUSTICE, MERCY, AND TRUTH. 

Every person who tries to buy an article for 
less than its proper value, or who tries to sell it 



276 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS, 

at more than its proper value — every consumer 
who keeps a tradesman waiting for his money, 
and every tradesman who bribes a consumer to 
extravagance by credit, is helping forward, ac- 
cording to his own measure of power, a system 
of baseless and dishonourable commerce, and 
forcing his country down into poverty and shame. 
And people of moderate means and average 
powers of mind would do far more real good by 
merely carrying out stern principles of justice 
and honesty in common matters of trade, than 
by the most ingenious schemes of extended phi- 
lanthropy, or vociferous declarations of theolog- 
ical doctrine. There are three weighty matters 
of the law — justice, mercy, and truth; and of 
these the Teacher puts truth last, because that 
cannot be known but by a course of acts of 
justice and love. But men put, in all their 
efforts, truth first, because they mean by it their 
own opinions; and thus, while the world has 
many people who would suffer martyrdom in the 
cause of what they call truth, it has few who 
will suffer even a little inconvenience in that of 
justice and mercy. 



PROPHETIC DESIGNERS. 
The nations whose chief support was in the 
chase, whose chief interest was in the battle. 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 2// 

whose chief pleasure was in the banquet, would 
take small care respecting the shapes of leaves 
and flowers; and notice little in the forms of the 
forest trees which sheltered them, except the 
signs indicative of the wood which would make 
the toughest lance, the closest roof, or the clear- 
est fire. The affectionate observation of the 
grace and outward character of vegetation is the 
sure sign of a more tranquil and gentle existence, 
sustained by the gifts, and gladdened by the 
splendour, of the earth. In that careful distinc- 
tion of species, and richness of delicate and un- 
disturbed organization, which characterize the 
Gothic design, there is the history of rural and 
thoughtful life, influenced by habitual tenderness, 
and devoted to subtle inquiry; and every dis- 
criminating and delicate touch of the chisel, as 
it rounds the petal or guides the branch, is a 
prophecy of the development of the entire body 
of the natural sciences, beginning with that of 
medicine, of the recovery of literature, and the 
establishment of the most necessary principles 
of domestic wisdom and national peace. 



THE FOOD OF THE SOlTL. 

That sentence of Genesis, " I have given thee 
every green herb for meat," like all the rest of 



2/8 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

the book, has a profound symbolical as well as 
a literal meaning. It is not merely the nourish- 
ment of the body, but the food of the soul, that 
is intended. The green herb is, of all nature, 
that which is most essential to the healthy 
spiritual life of man. Most of us do not need 
fine scenery; the precipice and the mountain 
peak are not intended to be seen by all men, — 
perhaps their power is greatest over those who 
are unaccustomed to them. But trees, and fields, 
and flowers were made for all, and are necessary 
for all. God has connected the labour which is 
essential to the bodily sustenance, with the 
pleasures which are healthiest for the heart; and 
while He made the ground stubborn. He made 
its herbage fragrant, and its blossoms fair. The 
proudest architecture that man can build has no 
higher honour than to bear the image and recall 
the memory of that grass of the field which is, at 
once, the type and the support of its existence; 
the goodly building is then most glorious when 
it is sculptured into the likeness of the leaves of 
Paradise; and the great Gothic spirit, as we 
showed it to be noble in its disquietude, is also 
noble in its hold of nature; it is, indeed, like the 
dove of Noah, in that she found no rest upon 
the face of the waters, — but like her in this also, 

" LO, IN HER MOUTH WAS AN OLIVE BRANCH, 
PLUCKED OFF." 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 2/9 



DIVISION OF LABOUR. 

Let me not be thought to speak wildly or ex- 
travagantly. It is verily this degradation of the 
operative into a machine, which, more than any 
other evil of the times, is leading the mass of 
the nations everywhere into vain, incoherent, 
destructive struggling for a freedom of which 
they cannot explain the nature to themselves. 
Their universal outcry against wealth, and against 
nobility, is not forced from them either by the 
pressure of famine, or the sting of mortified pride. 
These do much, and have done much in all ages; 
but the foundations of society were never yet 
shaken as they are at this day. It is not that 
men are ill fed, but that they have no pleasure 
in the work by which they make their bread, and 
therefore look to wealth as the only means of 
pleasure. It is not that men are pained by the 
scorn of the upper classes, but they cannot en- 
dure their own; for they feel that the kind of 
labour to which they are condemned is verily a 
degrading one, and makes them less than men. 
Never had the upper classes so much sympathy 
with the lower, or charity for them, as they have 
at this day, and yet never were they so much 
hated by them: for, of old, the separation be- 
tween the noble and the poor was merely a wall 
built by law; now it is a veritable difference in 



28o PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

level of standing, a precipice between upper and 
lower grounds in the field of humanity, and there 
i^ pestilential air at the bottom of it. I know 
not if a day is ever to come when the nature of 
right freedom will be understood, and when men 
will see that to obey another man, to labour for 
him, yield reverence to him or to his place, is 
not slavery. It is often the best kind of liberty, 
— liberty from care. The man who says to one, 
Go, and he goeth, and to another. Come, and he 
cometh, has, in most cases, more sense of re- 
straint and difficulty than the man who obeys 
him. The movements of the one are hindered 
by the burden on his shoulder; of the other, by 
the bridle on his lips: there is no way by which 
the burden may by lightened; but we need not 
suffer from the bridle if we do not champ at it. 
To yield reverence to another, to hold ourselves 
and our lives at his disposal^ is not slavery; 
often, it is the noblest state in which a man can 
live in this world. There is, indeed, a reverence 
which is servile, that is to say, irrational or sel- 
fish: but there is also noble reverence, that is to 
say, reasonable and loving; and a man is never 
so noble as when he is reverent in this kind; 
nay, even if the feeling pass the bounds of mere 
reason, so that it be loving, a man is raised by 
it. Which had, in reality, most of the serf na- 
ture in him, — the Irish peasant who was lying 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 28 1 

in wait yesterday for his landlord, with his mus- 
ket muzzle thrust through the ragged hedge; or 
that old mountain servant who, 200 years ago, 
at Inverkeithing, gave up his own life and the 
lives of his seven sons for his chief ?* — and as 
each fell, calling forth his brother to the death, 
" Another for Hector!" And therefore, in all 
ages and all countries, reverence has been paid 
and sacrifice made by men to each other, not 
only without complaint, but rejoicingly; and 
famine, and peril, and sword, and all evil, and 
all shame, have been borne willingly in the causes 
of masters and kings; for all these gifts of the 
heart ennobled the men who gave, not less than 
the men who received them, and nature 
prompted, and God rewarded the sacrifice. But 
to feel their souls withering within them, un- 
thanked, to find their whole being sunk into an 
unrecognized abyss, to be counted off into a 
heap of mechanism, numbered with its wheels, 
and weighed with its hammer strokes; — this na- 
ture bade not, — this God blesses not, — this hu- 
manity for no long time is able to endure. 

We have much studied and much perfected, 
of late, the great civilised invention of the di- 
vision of labour; only we give it a false name. 
It is not, truly speaking, the labour that is di- 

* Vide Preface to " Fair Maid of Perth." 



282 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

vided; but the men: — Divided into mere seg- 
ments of men — broken into small fragments and 
crumbs of life; so that all the little piece of in- 
telligence that is left in a man is not enough t| 
make a pin, or a nail, but exhausts itself in mak- 
ing the point of a pin, or the head of a nail. 
Now it is a good and desirable thing, truly, to 
make many pins in a day; but if we could only 
see with what crystal sand their points were pol- 
ished, — sand of human soul, much to be magni- 
fied before it can be discerned for what it is, — 
we should think there might be some loss in it 
also. And the great cry that rises from all our 
manufacturing cities, louder than their furnace 
blast, is all in very deed for this, — that we manu- 
facture everything there except men; we blanch 
cotton, and strengthen steel, and refine sugar, and 
shape pottery; but to brighten, to strengthen, to 
refine, or to form a single living spirit, never 
enters into our estimate of advantages. And all 
the evil to which that cry is urging our myriads 
can be met only in one way: not by teaching 
nor preaching, for to teach them is but to show 
them their misery, and to preach to them, if we 
do nothing more than preach, is to mock at it. 
It can be met only by a right understanding, on 
the part of all classes, of what kinds of labour 
are good for men, raising them and making them 
happy; by a determined sacrifice of such conve- 



rRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 283 

nience, or beauty, or cheapness as is to be got 
only by the degradation of the workman; and by 
equally determined demand for the products 
and results of healthy and ennobling labour. 

And how, it will be asked, are these products 
to be recognized, and this demand to be regu- 
lated? Easily: by the observance of three broad 
and simple rules: 

1. Never encourage the manufacture of any 
article not absolutely necessary, in the produc- 
tion of which Invention has no share. 

2. Never demand an exact finish for its own 
sake, but only for some practical or noble end. 

3. Never encourage imitation or copying of 
any kind, except for the sake of preserving 
record of great v/orks. 

The second of these principles is the only 
one which directly rises out of the considera- 
tion of our immediate subject; but I shall 
briefly explain the meaning and extent of the 
first also, reserving the enforcement of the third 
for another place. 

I. Never encourage the manufacture of any- 
thing not necessary, in the production of which 
invention has no share. 

For instance. Glass beads are utterly unnec- 
essary, and there is no design or thought em- 
ployed in their manufacture. They are formed 
by first drawing out the glass into rods; these 



2S4 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

rods are chopped up into fragments of the size 
of beads by the human hand, and the fragments 
are then rounded in the furnace. The men who 
chop up the rods sit at their work all day, their 
hands vibrating with a perpetual and exquisitely 
timed palsy, and the beads dropping beneath 
their vibration like hail. Neither they, nor the 
men who draw out the rods or fuse the frag- 
ments, have the smallest occasion for the use of 
any single human faculty; and every young lady, 
therefore, who buys glass beads is engaged in the 
slave-trade, and in a much more cruel one than 
that which we have so long been endeavouring 
to put down. 

But glass cups and vessels may become the 
subject of exquisite invention; and if in buying 
these we pay for the invention, that is to say, for 
the beautiful form, or colour, or engraving, and 
not for mere finish of execution, we are doing 
good to humanity. 



THE MODERN INFIDEL CREED. 

Co-relative with the assertion, " There is a 
foolish God," is the assertion, " There is a brut- 
ish man." • " As no laws but those of the Devil 
are practicable in the world, so no impulses but 
those of the brute " (says the modern political 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 285 

economist) " are appealable to in the world. 
Faith, generosity, honesty, zeal, and self-sacrifice 
are poetical phrases. None of these things can, 
in reality, be counted up#n; there is no truth in 
man which can be used as a moving or produc- 
tive power. All motive force in hira is essen- 
tially brutish, covetous, or contentious. His 
power is only power of prey: otherwise than the 
spider, he cannot design; otherwise than the 
tiger, he cannot feed." This is the modern in- 
terpretation of that embarrassing article of the 
Creed, " the communion of saints." 

It has always seemed very strange to me, not 
iindeed that this creed should have been adopted, 
it being the entirely necessary consequence of 
the previous fundamental article; — but that no 
one should ever seem to have any misgivings 
about it; — that, practically, no one had seen how 
strong work was done by man; how either for 
hire, or for hatred, it never had been done; and 
that no amount of pay had ever made a good 
soldier, a good teacher, a good artist, or a good 
workman. You pay your soldiers and sailors so 
many pence a day, at which rated sum, one will 
do good fighting for you; another, bad fighting. 
Pay as you will, the entire goodness of the fight- 
ing depends, always, on its being done for noth- 
ing; or rather, less than nothing, in the expecta- 
tion of no pay but death. Examine the work of 



2^6 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

your spiritual teachers, and you will find the sta- 
tistical law respecting them is, " The less pay, the 
better work." Examine also your writers and art- 
ists : for ten pounds you shall have a Paradise Lost, 
and for a plate of figs, a Durer drawing; but for 
a million of money sterling, neither. Examine 
your men of science: paid by starvation, Kepler 
will discover the law of the orbs of heaven for 
you; — and, driven out to die in the street, 
Swammerdam shall discover the laws of life for 
you — such hard terms do they make with you, 
these brutish men, who can only be had for 
hire. 

Neither is good work ever done for hatred, 
any more than hire — but for love only. 



CONCESSION AND COMPANIONSHIP. 

The leaves, as we shall see immediately, are 
the feeders of the plant. Their own orderly 
habits of succession must not interfere with 
their main business of finding food. Where the 
sun and air are the leaf must go, whether it be 
out of order or not. So, therefore, in any 
group, the first consideration with the young 
leaves is much like that of young bees, how to 
keep out of each other's way, that every one 
may at once leave its neighbours as much free- 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 28/ 

air pasture as possible, and obtain a relative 
freedom for itself. This would be a quite sim- 
ple matter, and produce other simply balanced 
forms, if each branch, with open air all round 
it, had nothing to think of but reconcilement 
of interests among its own leaves. But every 
branch has others to meet or to cross, sharing 
with them, in various advantage, what shade or 
sun or rain is to be had. Hence every single 
leaf-cluster presents the general aspect of a 
little family, entirely at unity among themselves, 
but obliged to get their living by various shifts, 
concessions, and infringements of the family 
rules, in order not to invade the privileges of 
other people in their neighbourhood. 

And in the arrangement of these concessions 
there is an exquisite sensibility among the leaves. 
They do not grow each to his own liking, till 
they run against one another, and then turn 
back sulkily; but by a watchful instinct, far 
apart, they anticipate their companions* courses, 
as ships at sea, and in every new unfolding of 
their edged tissue, guide themselves by the sense 
of each other's remote presence, and by a watch- 
ful penetration of leafy purpose in the far future. 
So that every shadow which one casts on the 
next, and every glint of sun which each reflects to 
the next, and every touch which in toss of storm 
each receives from the next, aid or arrest the 



288 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

development of their advancing form, and 
direct, as will be safest and best, the curve of 
every fold and the current of every vein. 

And this peculiar character exists in all the 
structures thus developed, that they are always 
visibly the result of a volition on the part of the 
leaf, meeting an external force or fate, to which 
it is never passively subjected. Upon it, as on 
a mineral in the course of formation, the great 
merciless influences of the universe, and the 
oppressive powers of minor things immediately 
near it, act continually. Heat and cold, gravity 
and the other attractions, windy pressure, or 
local and unhealthy restraint, must, in certain 
inevitable degrees, affect the whole of its life. 
But it is life which they affect; — a life of prog- 
ress and will, — not a merely passive accumula- 
tion of substance. This may be seen by a single 
glance. The mineral, — suppose an agate in the 
course of formation — shows in every line noth- 
ing but a dead submission to surrounding force. 
Flowing, or congealing, its substance is here re- 
pelled, there attracted, unresisting to its place, 
and its languid sinuosities follow the clefts of 
the rock that contains them, in servile deflexion 
and compulsory cohesion, impotently calculable, 
and cold. But the leaf, full of fears and affec- 
tions, shrinks and seeks, as it obeys. Not 
thrust, but awed into its retiring; not dragged, 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 289 

but won to its advance; not bent aside, as by a 
bridle, into new courses of growth: but per- 
suaded and converted through tender continu- 
ance of voluntary change. 

The mineral and it differing thus widely in 
separate being, they differ no less in modes of 
companionship. The mineral crystals group 
themselves neither in succession, nor in sym- 
pathy; but great and small recklessly strive for 
place, and deface or distort each other as they^ 
gather into opponent asperities. The confused 
crowd fills the rock cavity, hanging together in a 
glittering, yet sordid heap, in which nearly 
every crystal, owing to their vain contention, is 
imperfect, or im.pure. Here and there one, at 
the cost and in defiance of the rest, rises into 
unwarped shape or unstained clearness. But 
the order of the leaves is one of soft and sub- 
dued concession. Patiently each awaits its ap- 
pointed time, accept its prepared place, yields its 
required observance. Under every oppression 
of external accident, the group yet follows a 
law laid down in its own heart; and all the 
members of it, whether in sickness or health, in 
strength or languor, combine to carry out this 
first and last heart law; receiving, and seeming 
to desire for themselves and for each other, only 
life which they may communicate, and ioveli- 
ness which they may reflect. 



290 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS, 

MOUNTAIN INFLUENCE. 

AVe have found mountains, invariably, calcu- 
lated for the delight, the advantage, or the 
teaching of men; prepared, it seems, so as to 
contain, alike in fortitude or feebleness, in kind- 
liness or in terror, some beneficence of gift, or 
profoundness of counsel. We have found that 
where at first all seemed disturbed and acciden- 
tal, the most tender laws were appointed to 
produce forms of perpetual beauty; and that 
where to the careless or cold observer it seemed 
severe or purposeless, the well-being of man has 
been chiefly consulted, and his rightly directed 
powers, and sincerely awakened intelligence, 
may find wealth in every falling rock, and wis- 
dom in every talking wave. 

It remains for us to consider what actual ef- 
fect upon the human race has been produced by 
the generosity, or the instruction of the hills; 
how far, in past ages, they have been thanked, 
or listened to; how far, in coming ages, it may 
be well for us to accept them for tutors, or ac- 
knowledge them for friends. 

What they have already taught us may, one 
would think, be best discerned in the midst of 
them, — in some place where they have had their 
own way with the human soul; where no veil has 
been drawn between it and them, no contradict- 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 2gi 

ing voice has confused their ministries of sound, 
or broken their pathos of silence: where war 
has never streaked their streams with bloody- 
foam, nor ambition sought for other throne 
than their cloud - courtiered pinnacles, nor 
avarice for other treasure than, year by year, 
is given to their unlaborious rocks, in budded 
jewels, and mossy gold. 

I do not know any district possessing a more . 
pure or uninterrupted fulness of mountain char- 
acter (and that of the highest order), or which 
appears to have been less disturbed by foreign 
agencies, than that which borders the course of 
the Trient between Valorsine and Martigny. 
The paths which lead to it out of the valley of 
the Rhone, rising at first in steep circles among 
the walnut trees, like winding stairs among the 
pillars of a Gothic tower, retire over the shoul- 
ders of the hills into a valley almost unknown, 
but thickly inhabited by an industrious and 
patient population. Along the ridges of the 
rocks, smoothed by old glaciers into long, dark, 
billowy swellings, like the backs of plunging 
dolphins, the peasant watches the slow colouring 
of the tufts of moss and roots of herb which, 
little by little, gather a feeble soil over the iron 
substance; then, supporting the narrow strip of 
clinging ground with a few stones, he subdues it 
to the spade; and in a year or two a little crest 



292 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

of corn is seen waving upon the rocky casque. 
The irregular meadows run in and out like inlets 
of lake among these harvested rocks, sweet with 
perpetual streamlets, that seem always to have 
chosen the steepest places to come down, for 
the sake of the leaps, scattering their handfuls of 
crystal this way and that, as the wind takes 
them, with all the grace, but with none of 
the formalism, of fountains; dividing into fanci- 
ful change of dash and spring, yet with the seal 
of their granite channels upon them, as the 
lightest play of human speech may bear the seal 
of past toil, and closing back out of their spray 
to lave the rigid angles, and brighten with silver 
fringes and glassy films each lower and lower 
step of sable stone; until at last, gathered alto- 
gether again, — except, perhaps, some chance 
drops caught on the apple-blossom, where it has 
budded a little nearer the cascade than it did 
last spring, — they find their way down to the 
turf, and lose themselves in that silently; with 
quiet depth of clear water furrowing among the 
grass blades, and looking only like their shadow, 
but presently emerging again in little startled 
gushes and laughing hurries, as if they had 
remembered suddenly that the day was too 
short for them to get down the hill. 

Green field, and glowing rock, and glancing 
Streamlet, all slope together in the sunshine 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 293 

towards the brows of the ravines, where the 
pines take up their own dominion of saddened 
shade; and with everlasting roar in the twihght, 
the stronger torrents thunder down pale from the 
glaciers, filling all their chasms with enchanted 
cold, beating themselves to pieces against the 
great rocks that they have themselves cast 
down, and forcing fierce way beneath their 
ghastly poise. 

The mountain paths stoop to these glens in 
forky zigzags, leading to some grey and narrow 
arch, all fringed under its shuddering curve with 
the ferns that fear the light; a cross of rough- 
hewn pine, iron-bound to its parapet, standing 
dark against the lurid fury of the foam. Far up 
the glen, as we pause beside the cross, the sky is 
seen through the openings in the pines, thin with 
excess of light; and, in its clear, consuming 
flame of white space, the summits of the rocky 
mountains are gathered into solemn crowns and 
circlets, all flushed in that strange, faint silence 
of possession by the sunshine which has in it so 
deep a melancholy; full of power, yet as frail as 
shadows; lifeless, like the walls of a sepulchre, 
yet beautiful in tender fall of crimson folds, like 
the veil of some sea spirit, that lives and dies as 
the foam flashes; fixed on a perpetual throne, 
stern against all strength, lifted above all sorrow, 
and yet effaced and melted utterly into the air 



294 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

by that last sunbeam that has crossed to them 
from between the two golden clouds. 

High above all sorrow: yes; but not unwit- 
nessing to it. The traveller on his happy 
journey, as his foot springs from the deep turf 
and strikes the pebbles gaily over the edge 
of the mountain road, sees with a glance of 
delight the clusters of nut-brown cottages that 
nestle among those sloping orchards, and glow 
beneath the boughs of the pines. Here, it may 
well seem to him, if there be sometimes hardship, 
there must be at least innocence and peace, and 
fellowship of the human soul with nature. It is 
not so. The wild goats that leap along those 
rocks have as much passion of joy in all that fair 
work of God as the men that toil among them. 
Perhaps more. Enter the street of one of those 
villages, and you will find it foul with that 
gloomy foulness that is suffered only by torpor, 
or by anguish of soul. Here, it is torpor — not 
absolute suffering, — not starvation or disease, 
but darkness of calm enduring; the spring known 
only as the time of the scythe, and the autumn 
as the time of the sickle, and the sun only as a 
warmth, the wind as a chill, and the mountains 
as a danger. They do not understand so much 
as the name of beauty, or of knowledge. They 
understand dimly that of virtue. Love, patience, 
hospitality, faith, — these things they know. To 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 295 

glean their meadows side by side, so happier; to 
bear the burden up the breathless mountain 
flank, unmurmuringly; to bid the stranger drink 
from their vessel of milk; to see at the foot of 
their low deathbeds a pale figure upon a cross, 
dying also, patiently; — in this they are different 
from the cattle and from the stones, but in all 
this unrewarded as far as concerns the present 
life. For them, there is neither hope nor pas- 
sion of spirit; for them neither advance nor ex- 
ultation. Black bread, rude roof, dark night, 
laborious day, weary arm at sunset; and life 
ebbs away. No books, no thoughts, no attain- 
ments, no rest; except only sometimes a little 
sitting in the sun under the church wall, as the 
bell tolls thin and far in the mountain air; 
a pattering of a few prayers, not understood, by 
the altar rails of the dimly gilded chapel, and so 
back to the sombre home, with the cloud upon 
them still unbroken — that cloud of rocky gloom, 
born out of the wild torrents and ruinous stones, 
and unlightened, even in their religion, except 
by the vague promise of some better thing un- 
known, mingled with threatening, and obscured 
by an unspeakable horror, — a smoke, as it were, 
of martyrdom, coiling up with the incense, and, 
amidst the images of tortured bodies and lament- 
ing spirits in hurtling flames, the very cross, for 



296 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

them, dashed more deeply than for others, with 
gouts of blood. 

Do not let this be thought a darkened picture 
of the life of these mountaineers. It is literal 
fact. No contrast can be more painful than 
that between the dwelling of any well conducted 
English cottager, and that of the equally honest 
Savoyard. The one, set in the midst of its dull 
flat fields and uninteresting hedgerows, shows in 
itself the love of brightness and beauty; its^ 
daisy-studded garden beds, its smoothly swept 
brick path to the threshold, its freshly sanded 
floor and orderly shelves of household furniture, 
all testify to energy of heart, and happiness in 
the simple course and simple possessions of daily 
life. The other cottage, in the midst of an in- 
conceivable, inexpressible beauty, set on some 
sloping bank of golden sward, with clear foun- 
tains flowing beside it, and wild flowers, and 
noble trees, and goodly rocks gathered round 
into a perfection as of Paradise, is itself a dark 
and plague-like stain in the midst of the gentle 
landscape. Within a certain distance of its 
threshold the ground is foul and cattle-trampled; 
its timbers are black with smoke, its garden 
choked with weeds and nameless refuse, its 
chambers empty and joyless, the light and wind 
gleaming and filtering through the crannies of 
their stones. All testifies that to its inhabitant 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 297 

the world is labour and vanity; that for him 
neither flowers bloom, nor birds sing, nor foun- 
tains glisten; and that his soul hardly differs 
from the grey cloud that coils and dies upon his 
hills; except in having no fold of it touched by 
the sunbeams. 

Is it not strange to reflect, thai hardly an even- 
ing passes in London or Paris but one of those 
cottages is painted for the better amusement of 
the fair and idle, and shaded with pasteboard 
pines by the scene-shifter ; and that good and 
kind people, — poetically minded, — delight them- 
selves in imagining the happy life led by peasants 
who dwell by Alpine fountains, and kneel to 
crosses upon peaks of rock? that nightly we lay 
down our gold to fashion forth simulacra of 
peasants, in gay ribands and white bodices, sing- 
ing sweet songs, and bowing gracefully to the 
picturesque crosses ; and all the while the veri- 
table peasants are kneeling, songlessly, to veri- 
table crosses, in another temper than the kind and 
fair audiences dream of, and assuredly with an- 
other kind of answer than is got out of the opera 
catastrophe; an answer having reference, it may 
be, in dim futurity, to those very audiences 
themselves? If all the gold that has gone to 
paint the simulacra of the cottages, and to put 
new son;;;s in the mouths of the simulacra of the 
peasants, had gone to brighten the existent cot- 



298 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

tages, and to put new songs into the mouths of 
the existent peasants, it might in the end, per- 
haps, have turned out better so, not only for the 
peasants, but for even the audience. For that 
form of the False Ideal has also its correspond- 
ent True Ideal, — consisting not in the naked 
beauty of statues, nor in the gauze flowers and 
crackling tinsel of theatres, but in the clothed 
and fed beauty of living men, and in the lights 
and laughs of happy homes. Night after night, 
the desire of such an ideal springs up in every 
idle human heart; and night after night, as far 
as idleness can, we work out this desire in costly 
lies. We paint the faded actress, build the lath 
landscape, feed our benevolence with fallacies of 
felicity, and satisfy our righteousness with poet- 
ry of justice. The time will come when, as the 
heavy-folded curtain falls upon our own stage of 
life, we shall begin to comprehend that the jus- 
tice we loved was intended to have been done in 
fact, and not in poetry, and the felicity we sym- 
pathized in, to have been bestowed and not 
feigned. We talk much of money's worth, yet 
perhaps may one day be surprised to find that 
what the wise and charitable European public 
gave to one night's rehearsal of hypocrisy, — to 
one hour's pleasant warbling of Linda or Lucia, 
— ^would have filled a whole Alpine Valley with 



rKECious riiouGin^s. 299 

happiness, and poured the waves of harvest over 
the famine of many a Lammermoor. 



MAN S ISOLATION. 

Let man stand in his due relation to other 
creatures, and to inanimate things — know them 
all and love them, as made for him, and he for 
them; — and he becomes himself the greatest 
and holiest of them. But let him cast off this 
relation, despise and forget the less creation 
around him, and instead of being the light of the 
world, he is as a sun in space — a fiery ball, spotted 
with storm. 

All the diseases of mind leading to fatalest 
ruin consist primarily in this isolation. They 
are the concentration of man upon himself, 
whether his heavenly interests or his worldly in- 
terests, matters not ; it is the being his oivn in- 
terests which makes the regard of them so mor- 
tal. Every form of asceticism on one side, of 
sensualism on the other, is an isolation of his 
soul or of his body; the fixing his thoughts upon 
them alone: while every healthy state of nations 
and of individual minds consists in the unselfish 
presence of the human spirit everywhere, ener- 
gizing over all things; speaking and living 
through all things. 



300 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

It is a matter of the simplest demonstration, 
that no man can be really appreciated but by 
his equal or superior. His inferior may over- 
estimate him in enthusiasm; or, as is more com- 
monly the case, degrade him, in ignorance; but 
he cannot form a grounded and just estimate. 
Without proving this, however — which it would 
take more space to do than I can spare — it is 
sufficiently evident that there is no process of 
amalgamation by which opinions, wrong individ- 
ually, can become right merely by their multi- 
tude. 



SHAMEFACEDNESS. 

If it were at this moment proposed to any of 
us, by our architects, to remove the grinning 
head of a satyr, or other classical or Palladian 
ornament, from the keystone of the door, and 
to substitute for it a cross, and an inscription 
testifying our faith, I believe that most persons 
would shrink from the proposal with an obscure 
and yet overwhelming sense that things would 
be sometimes done, and thought, within the 
house which would make the inscription on its 
gate a base hypocrisy. And if so, let us look to 
it, whether that strong reluctance to utter a 
definite religious profession, which so many of 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 3OI 

US feel, and which, not very carefully examining 
into its dim nature, we conclude to be modesty, 
or fear of hypocrisy, or other such form of ami- 
ableness, be not, in very deed, neither less nor 
more than Infidelity; whether Peter's " I know 
not the man" be not the sum and substance of 
all these misgivings and hesitations; and whether 
the shamefacedness which we attribute to sincer- 
ity and reverence, be not such shamefacedness 
as may at last put us among those of whom the 
Son of Man shall be ashamed. 



MAN THE IMAGE OF GOD. 

The directest manifestation of Deity to man 
is in His own image, that is, in man. 

" In his own image. After His likeness." Ad 
itnaginetfi et si?nilitudtnem Suavi. I do not know 
what people in general understand by those 
words. I suppose they ought to be understood. 
The truth they contain seems to lie at the foun- 
dation of our knowledge both of God and man; 
vet do we not usually pass the sentence by, in 
dull reverence, attaching no definite sense to it 
at all? For all practical purpose, might it not as 
well be out of the text? 

I have no time, nor much desire, to examine 
the vague expressions of belief with which the 



302 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

verse has been encumbered. Let us try to find 
its only possible plain significance. 

It cannot be supposed that the bodily shape of 
man resembles or resembled any bodily shape in 
Deity. The likeness must therefore be, or have 
been, in the soul. Had it wholly passed away, 
and the Divine soul been altered into a soul bru- 
tal or diabolic, I suppose we should have been 
told of the change. But we are told of nothing 
of the kind. The verse still stands as if for our 
use and trust. It was only death which was to 
be our punishment. Not chaiige. So far a? we 
live, the image is still there; defiled, if you will; 
broken, if you will; all but effaced, if yon will, 
by death and the shadow of it. But not changed. 
We are not made now in any other image than 
God's. There are, indeed, the two states of this 
image — the earthly and the heavenly, but both 
Adamite, both human, both the same likeness; 
only one defiled, and one pure. So that the soul 
Df man is still a mirror, wherein may be seen, 
darkly, the image of the mind of God. These 
may seem daring words. I am sorry that they 
do; but I am helpless to soften them. Discover 
any other meaning of the text if you are able; — 
but be sure that it is a meaning — a meaning in 
your head and heart, — not a subtle gloss, nor 
a shifting of one verbal expression into another, 
both idealess. I repeat, that, to me, the verse 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 303 

has, and can have, no other signification than 
this — that the soul of man is a mirror of the 
mind of God. A mirror dark, distorted, broken, 
use what blameful words you please of its state; 
yet in the main, a true mirror, out of which 
alone, and by which alone, we can know anything 
of God at all. " How?" the reader, perhaps, 
answers indignantly. " I know the nature of 
God by revelation, not by looking into myself." 

Revelation to what? To a nature incapable 
of receiving truth? That cannot be; for only 
to a nature capable of truth, desirous of it, dis- 
tinguishing it, feeding upon it, revelation is pos- 
sible. To a being undesirous of it, and hating 
it, revelation is impossible. There can be none 
to a brute, or fiend. In so far, therefore, as you 
love truth, and live therein, in so far revelation 
can exist for you; — and in so far your mind is 
the image of God's. 

But consider farther, not only to what, but by 
what is the revelation. By sight? or word? If 
by sight, then to eyes which see justly. Other- 
wise, no sight would be revelation. So far, then, 
as your sight is just, it is the image of God's 
sight. 

If by words, — how do you know their mean- 
ings? Here is a short piece of precious word- 
revelation, for instance. " God is love." 

Love ! yes. But what is thatl The revelation 



304 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

does not tell you that, I think. Look into the 
mirror, and you will see. Out of your own heart 
you may know what love is. In no other possi- 
.ble way, — by no other help or sign. All the 
words and sounds ever uttered, all the revela= 
tions of cloud, or flame, or crystal, are utterly 
powerless. They cannot tell you, in the small- 
est point, what love means. Only the broken 
mirror can. 

Here is more revelation. " God is just !" 
Just! What is that? The revelation cannot 
help you to discover. You say it is dealing 
equitably or equally. But how do you discern 
the equality? Not by inequality of mind; not 
by a mind incapable of weighing, judging, or 
distributing. If the lengths seem unequal in the 
broken mirror, for you they are unequal; but if 
they seem equal, then the mirror is true. So far 
as you recognize equality, and your conscience 
tells you what is just, so far your mind is the 
image of God's: and so far as you do not dis- 
cern this nature of justice or equality, the words 
" God is just" brings no revelation to you. 

" But His thoughts are not as our thoughts." 
No; the sea is not as the standing pool by the 
wayside. Yet when the breeze crisps the pool, 
you may see the image of the breakers, and a 
likeness of the foam. Nay, in some sort, the 
same foam. If the sea is for ever invisible to 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 305 

you, something you may learn of it from the 
t)Ool. Nothing, assuredly, any otherwise. 

"But this poor miserable Me! Is this, then, 
all the book I have got to read about God in?" 
Yes, truly so. No other book, nor fragment of 
book, than that, will you ever find; — no velvet- 
bound missal, nor frankincensed manuscript; — 
nothing hieroglyphic nor cuneiform; papyrus 
and pyramid are alike silent on this matter; — 
nothing in the clouds above, nor in the earth be- 
neath. That flesh-bound volume is the only 
revelation that is, that was, or that can be. In 
that is the image of God painted; in that is the 
law of God written; in that is the promise of 
God revealed. Know thyself; for through thy- 
self only thou canst know God. 

Through the glass, darkly. But, except 
through the glass, in nowise. 

A tremulous crystal, waved as water, poured 
out upon the ground; — you may defile it, despise 
it, pollute it at your pleasure, and at your peril; 
for on the peace of those weak waves must all 
the heaven you shall ever gain be first seen; and 
through such purity as you can win for those 
dark waves, must all the light of the risen Sun 
of righteousness be bent down, by faint refrac- 
tion. Cleanse them, and calm them, as you love 
your life. 

Therefore it is that all the power of nature 



306 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

depends on subjection to the human soul. Man 
is the sun of the world; more than the real sun. 
The fire of his wonderful heart is the only light 
and heat worth gauge or measure. Where he is, 
are the tropics; where he is not, the ice- world. 



THE DREAMERS. 

Newton, probably, did not perceive whether 
the apple which suggested his meditations on 
gravity was withered or rosy; nor could Howard 
be affected by the picturesqueness of the archi- 
tecture which held the sufferers it was his occu 
pation to relieve. 

This wandering away in thought from the 
thing seen to the business of life is not, however, 
peculiar to men of the highest reasoning powers 
or the most active benevolence. It takes place, 
more or less, in nearly all persons of average 
mental endowment. They see and love what is 
beautiful, but forget their admiration of it in fol- 
lowing some train of thought which it suggested, 
and which is of more personal interest to them. 

Suppose that three or four persons come in 
sight of a group of pine-trees, not having seen 
pines for some time. One, perhaps an engineer, 
is struck by the manner in which their roots hold 
the ground, and sets himself to examine their 
jibres, in a few minutes retaining little more con- 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 307 

sciousness of the beauty of the trees than if he 
were a ropemaker untwisting the strands of a 
cable; to another, the sight of the trees calls up 
some happy association, and presently he forgets 
them, and pursues the memories they sum- 
moned; a third is struck by certain groupings of 
their colours, useful to him as an artist, which 
he proceeds to note mechanically for future use 
with as little feeling as a cook setting down the 
constituents of a newly-discovered dish; and a 
fourth, impressed by the wild wailing of boughs 
and roots, will begin to change them in his fancy 
into dragons and monsters, and lose his grasp 
of the scene in fantastic metamorphosis; while 
in the mind of the man who has most the power 
of contemplating the thing itself, all these per- 
ceptions and ideas are partially present, not dis- 
tinctly, but in a mingled and perfect harmony. 
He will not see the colours of the tree so well as 
the artist, nor its fibres so well as the engineer; 
he will not altogether share the emotion of the 
sentimentalist, nor the trance of the idealist; 
but fancy, and feeling, and perception, and im- 
agination, will all obscurely meet and balance 
themselves in him, and he will see the pine-trees 
somewhat in this manner: 

" Worthier still of note 
Are those fraternal Four of Borrowdale, 
Joined in one solemn and capacious grove; 



308 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

Huge trunks! and each particular trunk a growth 
Of intertwisted fibres serpentine 
Up-coiling, and inveterately convolved; 
Nor uniformed with Phantasy, and looks 
That threaten the profane; a pillared shade, 
Upon whose grassless floor of red-brown hue, 
By sheddings from the pining umbrage tinged 
Perennially, — beneath whose sable roof 
Of boughs, as if for festal purpose, decked 
With unrejoicing berries, ghostly Shapes 
May meet at noontide; Fear and trembling Hope, 
Silence and Foresight; Death the Skeleton, 
And Time the Shadow; there to celebrate, 
As in a natural temple scattered o'er 
With altars undisturbed of mossy stone, 
United worship." 

The power, therefore, of thus fully perceim'ng 
any natural object depends on our being able to 
group and fasten all our fancies about it as a 
centre, making a garland of thoughts for it, in 
which each separate thought is subdued and 
shortened of its own strength, in order to fit it 
for harmony with others ; the intensity of our 
enjoyment of the object depending, first, on its 
own beauty, and then on the richness of the 
garland. And men who have this habit of clus- 
tering and harmonising their thoughts are a 
little too apt to look scornfully upon the harder 
workers who tear the bouquet to pieces to 
examine the stems. This was the chief narrow- 
ness of Wordsworth's mind : he could not under- 



pnECiors THOUGHTS. 309 

stand that to break a rock with a hammer in 
search of crystal may sometimes be an act not 
disgraceful to human nature, and that to dissect 
a flower may sometimes be as proper as to dream 
over it ; whereas, ail experience goes to teach 
us that among men of average intellect, the 
most useful members of society are the dissec- 
tors, not the dreamers. It is not that they love 
nature or beauty less, but that they love result, 
effect, and progress more. 



THE OLD CATHEDRALS. 

Men say their pinnacles point to heaven. 
Why, so does every tree that buds, and every 
bird that rises as it sings. Men say their aisles 
are good for worship. Why, so is every moun- 
tain glen, and rough sea-shore. But this they 
have of distinct and indisputable glory, — that 
their mighty walls were never raised, and never 
shall be, but by men who love and aid each 
other in their weakness ; — that all their interlac- 
ing strength of vaulted stone has its foundation 
upon the stronger arches of manly fellowship, 
and all their changing grace of depressed or 
lifted pinnacle owes its cadence and complete- 
ness to sweeter symmetries of human soul. 



3IO PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 



PLAGIARISM. 

Touching plagiarism in general, it is to be 
remembered that all men who have sense and 
feeling are being continually helped : they are 
taught by every person whom they meet and 
enriched by everything that falls in their way. 
The greatest is he who has been oftenest aided ; 
and, if the attainments of all human minds could 
be traced to their real sources, it would be found 
that the world had been laid most under contri- 
bution by the men of most original power, and 
that every day of their existence deepened their 
debt to their race, while it enlarged their gifts to 
it. The labour devoted to trace the origin of 
any thought, or any invention, will usually issue 
in the blank conclusion that there is nothing 
new under the sun ; yet nothing that is truly 
great can ever be altogether borrowed ; and 
he is commonly the wisest, and is always the 
happiest, who receives simply, and without en- 
vious question, whatever good is offered him, 
with thanks to its immediate giver. 



PRINCIPLE. 



A nation's labour, well applied, is amply suffi- 
cient to provide its whole population with good 



PRECIOUS THOUGriTS. 31I 

food, comfortable clothing, and pleasant luxury 
But the good, instant, and constant application 
is everything. We must not, when our strong 
hands are thrown out of work, look wildly about 
for want of something to do with them. If ever 
we feel that want, it is a sign that all our house- 
hold is out of order. Fancy a farmer's wife, to 
whom one or two of her servants should come 
at twelve o'clock at noon, crying that they had 
got nothing to do ; that they did not know what 
to do next : and fancy still farther, the said 
farmer's wife looking hopelessly about her rooms 
and yard, they being all the while considerably 
in disorder, not knowing where to set the spare 
hand-maidens to work, and at last complaining 
bitterly that she had been obliged to give them 
their dinner for nothing. Would you not at once 
assert of such a mistress that she knew nothing 
of her duties ? and would you not be certain, 
if the household were rightly managed, the mis- 
tress would be only too glad at any moment 
to have the help of any number of spare hands ; 
that she would know in an instant what to set 
them to ; — in an instant what part of to-morrow's 
work might be most serviceably forwarded, what 
part of next month's work most wisely provided 
for, or what new task of some profitable kind 
undertaken ? and when the evening came, and 
she dismissed her servants to their recreation 



312 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

or their rest, or gathered them to the reading 
round the work-table, under the eaves in the 
sunset, would you not be sure to find that none 
of them had been overtasked by her, just be- 
cause none had been left idle ; that everything 
had been accomplished because all had been 
employed ; that the kindness of the mistress had 
aided her presence of mind, and the slight 
labour had been entrusted to the weak, and the 
formidable to the strong ; and that as none had 
been dishonoured by inactivity, so none had 
been broken by toil ? Now the precise counter- 
part of such a household would be seen in a 
nation in which political economy was rightly 
understood. 



jDISCipline and interference. 

Fo/ half an hour every Sunday we expect a 
man in a black gown, supposed to be telling us 
truth, to address us as brethren, though we 
should be shocked at the notion of any brother- 
hood existing among us out of church. And 
we can hardly read a few sentences on any politi- 
cal subject without running a chance of crossing 
the phrase " paternal government," though we 
should be utterly horror-struck at the idea of 
governments claiming anything like a father's 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 313 

authority over us. Now, I believe those two 
formal phrases are in both instances perfectly- 
binding and accurate, and that the image of the 
farm and its servants which 1 have hitherto 
used, as expressing a wholesome national organi- 
zation, fails only of doing so, not because it is 
too domestic, but because it is not domestic 
enough ; because the real type of a well-organ- 
ized nation must be presented, not by a farm 
cultivated by servants who wrought for hire, 
and might be turned away if they refused to 
labour, but by a farm in which the master was a 
father, and in which all the servants were sons ; 
which implied, therefore, in all its regulations, 
not merely the order of expediency, but the 
bonds of affection and responsibilities of rela- 
tionship ; and in which all acts and services 
were not only to be sweetened by brotherly con- 
cord, but to be enforced by fatherly authority. 
Observe, I do not mean in the least that we 
ought to place such an authority in the hands 
of any one person, or of any class, or body of 
persons. But I do mean to say that as an 
individual who conducts himself wisely must 
make laws for himself which at some time or 
other may appear irksome or injurious, but 
which, precisely at the time they appear most 
irksome, it is most necessary he should obey, so 
a nation which means to conduct itself wisely, 



314 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

must establish authority over itself, vested 
either in kings, councils, or laws, which it must 
resolve to obey, even at times when the law or 
authority appears irksome to the body of the 
people, or injurious to certain masses of it. 
And this kind of national law has hitherto been 
only judicial; contented, that is, with an endeav- 
our to prevent and punish violence and crime; but 
as we advance in our social knowledge, we shall 
endeavour to make our government paternal as 
well as judicial; that is, to establish such laws 
and authorities as may at once direct us in our 
occupations, protect us against our follies, and 
visit us in our distresses: a government which 
shall repress dishonesty, as now it punishes 
theft; which shall show how the discipline of 
the masses may be brought to aid the toils of 
peace, as discipline of the masses has hitherto 
knit the sinews of battle; a government which 
shall have its soldiers of the ploughshare as well 
as its soldiers of the sword, and which shall dis- 
tribute more proudly its golden crosses of in- 
dustry—golden as the glow of the harvest, than 
now it grants its bronze crosses of honour — 
bronzed with the crimson of blood. 

I have not, of course, time to insist on the 
nature or details of government of this kind; only 
I wish to plead for your several and future con- 
sideration of this one truth, that the notion of 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 315 

Discipline and Interference lies at the very root 
of all human progress or power; that the *' Let 
alone " principle is, in all things which man has to 
do with, the principle of death; that it is ruin to 
him, certain and total, if he lets his land alone — 
if he lets his fellow-men alone — if he lets his own 
soul alone. That his whole life, on the contrary, 
must, if it is healthy life, be continually one of 
ploughing and pruning, rebuking and helping, 
governing and punishing; and that therefore it is 
only in the concession of some great principle of 
restraint and interference in national action that 
he can ever hope to find the secret of protection 
against national degradation. 



LESSONS FROM ROCKS. 

There is one lesson evidently intended to be 
taught by the different characters of these rocks, 
which we must not allow to escape us. We 
have to observe, first, the state of perfect pow- 
erlessness, and loss of all beauty, exhibited in 
those beds of earth in which the separated 
pieces or particles are entirely independent of 
each other, more especially in the gravel whose 
pebbles have all been rolled t?ito one shape: sec- 
ondly, the greater degree of permanence, power, 
and beauty possessed by the rocks whose com- 



3l6 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

ponent atoms have some affection and attraction 
for each other, though all of one kind; and, 
lastly, the utmost form and highest beauty of 
the rocks in which the several atoms have all 
different shapes^ characters, and offices; but are 
inseparably united by some fiery process which 
has purified them all. 

It can hardly be necessary to point out how 
these natural ordinances seem intended to teach 
us the great truths which are the basis of all 
political science; how the polishing friction 
which separates, the affection which binds, and 
the affliction that fuses and confirms, are ac- 
curately symbolized by the processes to which 
the several ranks of hills appear to owe their 
present aspect; and how, even if the knowledge 
of those processes be denied to us, that present 
aspect may in itself seem no imperfect image of 
the various states of mankind; first, that which 
is powerless through total disorganization; sec- 
ondly, that which, though united, and in some 
degree powerful, is yet incapable of great effort 
or result, owing to the too great similarity and 
confusion of offices, both in ranks and individ- 
uals; and finally, the perfect state of brother- 
hood and strength in which each character is 
clearly distinguished, separately perfected, and 
employed in its proper place and office. 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 317 



REVERENCE. 

When the flowers and grass were regarded as 
means of life, and therefore (as the thoughtful 
labourer of the soil must always regard them) 
with the reverence due to those gifts of God 
which were most necessary to his existence; al- 
though their own beauty was less felt, their pro- 
ceeding from the Divine hand was more serious- 
ly acknowledged, and the herb yielding seed, 
and fruit tree yielding fruit, though in them- 
selves less admired, were yet solemnly connected 
in the heart with the reverence of Ceres, Po- 
mona, or Pan. But when the sense of these 
necessary uses was more or less lost, among the 
upper classes, by the delegation of the art of 
husbandry to the hands of the peasant, the 
flower and fruit, whose bloom or richness thus 
became a mere source of pleasure, were re- 
garded with less solemn sense of the Divine gift 
in them; and were converted rather into toys 
than treasures, chance gifts for gaiety, rather 
than promised rewards of labour; so that while 
the Greek could hardly have trodden the formal 
furrow, or plucked the clusters from the trellised 
vine, without reverent thoughts of the deities of 
field and leaf, who gave the seed to fructify, and 
the bloom to darken, the mediaeval knight 
plucked the violet to wreathe in his lady's hair, 



3l8 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

or strewed the idle rose on the turf at her feet, 
with little sense of anything in the nature that 
gave them, but a frail, accidental, involuntary 
exuberance; while also the Jewish sacrificial 
system being now done away, as well as the 
Pagan mythology, and, with it, the whole con- 
ception of meat offering or firstfruits offering, 
the chiefest seriousness of all the thoughts con- 
nected with the gifts of nature faded from the 
minds of the classes of men concerned with art 
and literature; while the peasant, reduced to 
serf level, was incapable of imaginative thought, 
owing to his want of general cultivation. 



MYSTERY IN LANGUAGE. 

All noble language-mystery is reached only by 
intense labour. Striving to speak with utter- 
most truth of expression, weighing word against 
word, and wasting none, the great speaker, ^or 
writer, toils first into perfect intelligibleness, 
then, as he reaches to higher subject, and still 
more concentrated and wonderful utterance, ha 
becomes ambiguous — as Dante is ambiguous, — 
half a dozen different meanings lightening out 
in separate rays from every word, and, here and 
there, giving rise to much contention of critics 
as to what the intended meaning actually was. 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 3I9 

But it is no drunkard's babble for all that, and 
the men who think it so, at the third hour of 
the day, do not highly honour themselves in the 
thought. 



ALL THINGS HAVE THEIR PLACE. 

Many plants are found alone on a certain soil 
or subsoil in a wild state, not because such soil 
is favourable to them, but because they alone 
are capable of existing on it, and because all 
dangerous rivals are by its inhospitality removed. 
Now if we withdraw the plant from this position, 
which it hardly endures, and supply it with the 
earth, and maintain about it the temperature 
that it delights in; withdrawing from it at the 
same time all rivals which, in such conditions, 
nature would have thrust upon it; we shall in- 
deed obtain a magnificently developed example 
of the plant, colossal in size, and splendid in or- 
ganization, but we shall utterly lose in it that 
moral ideal which is dependent on its right ful- 
filment of its appointed functions. It was in- 
tended and created by the Deity for the cover- 
ing of those lonely spots where no other plant 
could live; it has been thereto endowed with 
courage, and strength, and capacities of endur- 
ance unequalled; its character and glory are not 



320 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

therefore in the gluttonous and idle feeling of 
its own over-luxuriance, at the expense of other 
creatures utterly destroyed and rooted out for 
its good alone, but in its right doing of its hard 
duty, and forward climbing into those spots of 
forlorn hope where it alone can bear witness to 
the kindness and presence of the Spirit that cut- 
teth out rivers among the rocks, as it covers the 
valleys with corn. 



PERFECT AND PARTIAL TRUTH. 

At least, in the midst of its malice, misery, and 
baseness, it is often a relief to glance at the 
graceful shadows, and take, for momentary com- 
panionship, creatures full only of love, gladness^ 
and honour. But the perfect truth will at last 
vindicate itself against the partial truth; the 
help which we can gain from the unsubstantial 
vision will be only like that which we may some- 
times receive, in weariness, from the scent of a 
flower or the passing of a breeze. 



THE REALITY. 



Whatever delight we may have been in the 
habit of taking in pictures, if it were but truly 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 321 

offered to us, to remove at our will the canvas 
from the frame, and in lieu of it to behold, fixed 
for ever, the image of some of those mighty 
scenes which it has been our way to make mere 
themes for the artist's fancy; if, for instance, 
we could again behold the Magdalene receiving 
her pardon at Christ's feet, or the disciples sit- 
ting with Him at the table of Emmaus; and 
this not feebly nor fancifully, but as if some 
silver mirror, that had leaned against the wall 
of the chamber, had been miraculously com- 
manded to retain for ever the colours that had 
flashed upon it for an instant, — would we not 
part with our picture — Titian's or Veronese's 
though it might be? 



RESPECT FOR THE DEAD. 

Our respect for the dead, when they are/wj/ 
dead, is something wonderful, and the way we 
show it more wonderful still. We show it with 
black feathers and black horses; we show it with 
black dresses and bright heraldries; we show it 
with costly obelisks and sculptures of sorrow, 
which spoil half of our most beautiful cathedrals. 
We show it with frightful gratings and vaults, 
and lids of dismal stone, in the midst of the 
quiet grass; and last, not least, we show it by 



322 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

permitting ourselves to tell any number of lies 
we think amiable or credible, in the epitaph. 
This feeling is common to the poor as well as 
the rich; and we all know how many a poor 
family will nearly ruin themselves, to testify their 
respect for some member of it in his coffin, whom 
they never much cared for when he was out of 
it; and how often it happens that a poor old 
v/oman will starve herself to death, in order that 
she may be respectably buried. 

Now, this being one of the most complete and 
special ways of wasting money;— no money 
being less productive of good, or of any percent- 
age whatever, than that which we shake away 
from the ends of undertakers' plumes — it is of 
course the duty of all good economists, and kind 
persons, to prove and proclaim continually, to 
the poor as well as the rich, that respect for 
the dead is not really shown by laying great 
stones on them to tell us where they are laid; 
but by remembering where they are laid without 
a stone to help us; trusting them to the sacred 
grass and saddened flowers; and still more, that 
respect and love are shown to them, not by 
great monuments to them which we build with 
our hands, but by letting the monuments stand, 
which they built with their own. And this is 
the point now in question. 

Observe, there are two great reciprocal duties 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 323 

concerning industry, constantly to be exchanged 
between the living and the dead. We, as we 
live and work, are to be always thinking of those 
who are to come after us; that what we do may be 
serviceable, as far as we can make it so, to them, 
as well as to us. Then, when we die, it is the 
duty of those who come after us to accept this 
work of ours with thanks and remembrance, not 
tlirusting it aside or tearing it down the moment 
they think they have no use for it. And each 
generation will only be happy or powerful to the 
pitch that it ought to be, in fulfilling these two 
duties to the Past and the Future. Its own work 
Avill never be rightly done, even for itself — never 
good, or noble, or pleasurable to its own eyes — 
if it does not also prepare it for the eyes of gen- 
erations yet to come. And its own possessions 
v.ill never be enough for it, unless it avails itself 
gratefully and tenderly of the treasures and wis- 
dom bequeathed to it by its ancestors. For, be 
assured, that all the best things and treasures 
of this world are not to be produced by each 
generation for itself; but we are all intended, 
not to carve our work in snow that will melt, but 
each and all of us to be rolling a great white 
gathering snowball, — higher and higher, larger 
and larger — along the Alps of human power. 
Thus the science of nations is to be accumula- 
tive from father to son; the history and poetry 



324 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

of nations is to be accumulative; each genera- 
tion treasuring the history and the songs of its 
ancestors, adding its own history and its own 
songs; and the art of nations is to be accumula- 
tive, — the work of living men not superseding, 
but building itself upon the work of the past. 
Nearly every great and intellectual race of the 
world has produced, at every period of its career, 
with some peculiar and precious character about 
it wholly unattainable by any other race, and at 
any other time, and the intention of Providence 
concerning that art is evidently that it should 
all grow together into one mighty temple; the 
rough and the smooth all finding their place, 
and rising, day by day, in richer and higher pin- 
nacles to heaven. 

Now just fancy what a position the world 
would have been in by this time, if it had in 
the least understood this duty or been capable 
of it. Fancy what we should have had around 
us now if, instead of quarrelling and fighting 
over their work, the nations had aided each 
other in their work, or if even in their conquests, 
instead of effacing the memorials of those they 
succeeded and subdued, they had guarded the 
spoils of their victories. Fancy what Europe 
would be now, if the delicate statues and tem- 
ples of the Greeks, — if the broad roads and 
massy walls of the Romans, — if the noble and 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 325 

pathetic architecture of the middle ages, had 
not been ground to dust by mere human rage. 
You talk of the scythe of Time, and the tooth 
of Time: I tell you. Time is scytheless and tooth- 
less; it is we who gnaw like the worm — we who 
smite like the scythe. It is ourselves who abol- 
ish — ourselves who consume: we are the mildew, 
and the flame, and the soul of man is to its own 
work as the moth, that frets when it cannot fly, 
and as the hidden flame that blasts where it 
cannot illumine. All these lost treasures of hu- 
man intellect have been wholly destroyed by 
human industry of destruction ; the marble 
would have stood its two thousand years as well 
in the polished statue as in the Parisian cliff; 
but we men have ground it to powder, and mixed 
it with our own ashes. The walls and the 
ways would have stood — it is we who have left 
not one stone upon another, and restored its 
pathlessness to the desert; the great cathedrals 
of old religion would have stood — it is we who 
have dashed down the carved work with axes 
and hammers, and bid the mountain-grass bloom 
upon the pavement, and the sea-winds chaunt 
in the galleries. 



326 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 



IDOLATRY. 
I do not intend, in thus applying the word 
** Idolatry" to certain ceremonies of Romanist 
worship, to admit the propriety of the ordinary 
Protestant manner of regarding those ceremonies 
as distinctively idolatrous, and as separating the 
Romanist from the Protestant Church by a gulf 
across which we must not look to our fellow- 
Christians but with utter reprobation and dis- 
dain. The Church of Rome does indeed dis- 
tinctively violate the i-^r^^^ commandment; but 
the true force and weight of the sin of idolatry 
are in the violation of the first, of which we are 
all of us guilty, in probably a very equal degree, 
considered only as members of this or that com- 
munion, and not as Christians or unbelievers. 
Idolatry is, both literally and verily, not the 
mere bowing down before sculptures, but the 
serving or becoming the slave of any images or 
imaginations which stand between us and God, 
and it is otherwise expressed in Scripture as 
"walking after the Imagination'' of our own 
hearts. And observe also that while, at least on 
one occasion, we find in the Bible an indulgence 
granted to the mere external and literal violation 
of the second commandment, " When I bow 
myself in the house of Rimmon, the Lord par- 
don thy servant in this thing," we find no indul- 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 32'' 

gence in any instance, or in the slightest degree, 
granted to " covetousness, which is idolatry" 
(Col. iii. 5; no casual association of terms, ob- 
serve, but again energetically repeated in Ephe- 
sians v. 5, " No covetous man, who is an idola- 
ter, hath any inheritance in the kingdom of 
Christ"); nor any to that denial of God, idolatry 
in one of its most subtle forms, following so 
often on the possession of that wealth against 
which Agur prayed so earnestly, " Give me 
neither poverty nor riches, lest I be full and 
deny thee, and say, * Who is the Lord? ' " 

And in this sense, which of us is not an idola- 
ter? Which of us has the right, in the fulness of 
that better knowledge, in spite of which he nev- 
ertheless is not yet separated from the service of 
this world, to speak scornfully of any of his 
brethren, because, in a guiltless ignorance, they 
have been accustomed to bow their knees before 
a statue? Which of us shall say that there may 
not be a spiritual worship in their apparent idol- 
atry, or that there is not a spiritual idolatry in 
our own apparent worship I 

For indeed it is utterly impossible for one 
man to judge of the feeling with which another 
bows down before an image. From that pure 
reverence in which Sir Thomas Brown wrote, 
** I can dispense with my hat at the sight of a 
cross, but not with a thought of my Redeemer," 



328 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS, 

to the worst superstition of the most ignorant 
Romanist, there is an infinite series of subtle 
transitions; and the point where simple rever- 
ence and the use of the image merely to render 
conception more vivid, and feeling more in- 
tense, change into definite idolatry by the attri- 
bution of Power to the image itself, is so diffi- 
cultly determinable that we cannot be too cau- 
tious in asserting that such a change has actu- 
ally taken place in the case of any individual. 



OBEDIENCE TO LAW, OR LOYALTY. 

In one of the noblest poems,* for its imagery 
and its music, belonging to the recent school of 

* " Ye Clouds! that far above me float and pause, 
Whose pathless march no mortal may control! 
Ye Ocean-Waves! that wheresoe'er ye roll, 
Yield homage only to eternal laws! 
Ye Woods! that listen to the night-birds singing, 

Midway the smooth and perilous slope reclined, 
Save when your own imperious branches swinging, 

Have made a solemn music of the wind! 
Where, like a man beloved of God, 
Through glooms, which never woodman trod. 

How oft, pursuing fancies holy, 
My moonlight way o'er flowering weeds I wound. 

Inspired, beyond the guess of folly, 
By each rude shape and wild unconquerable sound! 



PRECIOUS THOUGH rs. 329 

our literature, the writer has sought in the aspect 
of inanimate nature the expression of that liberty 
which, having once wooed, he had seen among 
men in its true dyes of darkness. But with what 
strange fallacy of interpretation! since in one 
noble line of his invocation he has contra- 
dicted the assumptions of the rest, and acknowl- 
edged the presence of a subjection, surely not 
less severe than eternal. How could he other- 

O ye loud Waves! and O ye Forests high? 
And O ye Clouds that far above me soared . 

Thou rising Sun ! thou blue rejoicing Sky J 
Yea, everything that is and will be free ,' 
Bear witness for me, wheresoe'er ye be, 
With what deep worship I have still adored 
The spirit of div'inest Liberty." — Coleridge. 

Noble verse, but erring thought: contrast George Her- 
bert:— 

" Slight those who say amidst their sickly healths, 

Thou livest by rule. What doth not so but man ? 

Houses are built by rule and Commonwealths. 

Entice the trusty sun, if that you can, 

From his ecliptic line; beckon the sky. 

Who lives by rule then, keeps good company. 

" Who keeps no guard upon himself is slack. 
And rots to nothing at the next great thaw; 
Man is a shop of rules, a well-truss'd pack 
Whose every parcel underwrites a law. 
Lose not thyself, nor give thy humours way; 
God gave them to thee under yuck and key." 



330 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS, 

wise? since if there be any one principle more 
widely than another confessed by every utter- 
ance, or more sternly than another imprinted on 
every atom of the visible creation, that princi- 
ple is not Liberty, but Law. 

Obedience is, indeed, founded on a kind of 
freedom, else it would become mere subjugation, 
but that freedom is only granted that obedience 
may be more perfect; and thus, while a measure 
of license is necessary to exhibit the individual 
energies of things, the fairness and pleasantness 
and perfection of them all consist in their Re- 
straint. Compare a river that has burst its banks 
with one that is bound by them, and the clouds 
that are scattered over the face of the whole 
heaven with those that are marshalled into ranks 
and orders by its winds. So that though re- 
straint, utter and unrelaxing, can never be 
comely, this is not because it is in itself an evil, 
but only because, when too great, it overpowers 
the nature of the thing restrained, and so counter- 
acts the other laws of which that nature is itself 
composed. And the balance wherein consists 
the fairness of creation is between the laws of 
life and being in the things governed and the laws 
of general sway to which they are subjected; and 
the suspension or infringement of either kind of 
law, or, literally, disorder, is equivalent to, and 
synonymous with, disease; while the increase of 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 33 ^ 

both honour and beauty is habitually on the side 
of restraint (or the action of superior law) rather 
than of character (or the action of inherent law). 
The noblest word in the catalogue of social vir- 
tue is " Loyalty," and the sweetest which men 
have learned in the pastures of the wilderness is 
"Fold." 

Nor is this all; but we may observe, that ex- 
actly in proportion to the majesty of things in 
the scale of being, is the completeness of their 
obedience to the laws that are set over them. 
Gravitation is less quietly, less instantly obeyed' 
by a grain of dust than it is by the sun and moon; 
and the ocean falls and flows under influences 
which the lake and river do not recognize. So 
also in estimating the dignity of any action or oc- 
cupation of men, there is perhaps no better test 
than the question " are its laws strait?" For their 
severity will probably be commensurate with the 
greatness of the numbers whose labour it concen- 
trates or whose interest it concerns. 



THE GOODNESS OF GOD IN CREATION. 

There is this difference between the positions 
held in creation by animals and plants, and 
thence in the dispositions with which we regard 
them; that the animals, being for the most part 
locomotive, are capable both of living where 



332 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS, 

they choose, and of obtaining what food they 
want, and of fulfilling all the conditions neces- 
sary to their health and perfection. For which 
reason they are answerable for such health and 
perfection, and we should be displeased and 
hurt if we did not find it in one individual as 
well as another. 

But the case is evidently different with plants. 
They are intended fixedly to occupy many places 
comparatively unfit for them, and to fill up all 
the spaces where greenness, and coolness, and 
ornament, and oxygen are wanted, and that with 
very little reference to their comfort or conven- 
ience. Now it would be hard upon the plant if, 
after being tied to a particular spot, where it is 
indeed much wanted, and is a great blessing, but 
where it has enough to do to live, whence it can- 
not move to obtain what it wants or likes, but 
must stretch its unfortunate arms here and there 
for bare breath and light, and split its way 
among rocks, and grope for sustenance in un- 
kindly soil; it would be hard upon the plant, I 
say, if under all these disadvantages, it were 
made answerable for its appearance, and found 
fault with because it was not a fine plant of the 
kind. And so we find it ordained that in order 
that no unkind comparisons may be drawn be- 
tween one and another, there are not appointed 
to plants the fixed number, position, and pro- 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 333 

portion of members which are ordained in animals 
(and any variation from which in these is un- 
pardonable), but a continually varying number 
and position, even among the more freely grow- 
ing examples, admitting therefore all kinds of 
license to those which have enemies to contend 
with, and that without in any way detracting 
from their dignity and perfection. 

So then there is in trees no perfect form which 
can be fixed upon or reasoned out as ideal; but 
that is always an ideal oak which, however 
poverty-stricken, or hunger-pinched, or tempest- 
tortured, is yet seen to have done, under its ap- 
pointed circumstances, all that could be expected 
of oak. 

And herein, then, we at last find the cause of 
that fact, that the exalted or seemingly improved 
condition, whether of plant or animal, induced 
by human interference, is not the true but artis- 
tical idea of it.* It has been well shown by Dr, 

* I speak not hereof those conditions of vegetation 
A^hich have especial reference to man, as of seeds and 
fruits, whose sweetness and farina seem in great measure 
given, not for the plant's sake but for his, and to which 
therefore the interruption in the harmony of creation of 
which he was the cause is extended, and their sweetness 
and larger measure of good to be obtained only by his 
redeeming labour. His curse has fallen on the corn and 
the vine, and the wild barlev misses of its fulness, that he 
may eat bread by the sweat of his brow. 



334 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

Herbert, that many plants are found alone on a 
certain soil or sub-soil in a wild state, not because 
such soil is favourable to them, but because they 
alone are capable of existing on it, and because 
all dangerous rivals are by its inhospitality re- 
moved. Now if we withdraw the plant from this 
position, which it hardly endures, and supply it 
with the earth, and maintain about it the tem- 
perature that it delights in; withdrawing from it 
at the same time all rivals which, in such condi- 
tions, nature would have thrust upon it, we shall 
indeed obtain a magnificently developed example 
of the plant, colossal in size, and splendid in 
organization, but we shall utterly lose in it that 
moral ideal which is dependent on its right ful- 
filment of its appointed functions. It was 
intended and created by the Deity for the cover- 
ing of those lonely spots where no other plant 
could live; it has been thereto endowed with 
courage, and strength, and capacities of endur- 
ance unequalled; its character and glory are not 
therefore in the gluttonous and idle feeling of its 
own over-luxuriance, at the expense of other 
creatures utterly destroyed and rooted out for 
its good alone, but in its right doing of its hard 
duty, and forward climbing into those spots of 
forlorn hope where it alone can bear witness to 
the kindness and presence of the Spirit that 
cutteth out rivers among the rocks, as it covers 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 335 

the valleys with corn: and there, in its vanward 
place, and only there, where nothing is withdrawn 
iOr it, nor hurt by it, and where nothing can take 
part of its honour, nor usurp its throne, are its 
strength, and fairness, and price, and goodness 
in the sight of God, to be truly esteemed. 

The first time that I saw the soldanella alpina, 
it was growing, of magnificent size, on a sunny 
Alpine pasture, among bleating of sheep and 
lowing of cattle, associated with a profusion of 
geum montanum, and ranunculus pyrenaeus. I 
noticed it only because new to me, nor perceived 
any peculiar beauty in its cloven flower. Some 
days after, I found it alone, among the rack of 
the higher clouds, and howling of glacier winds, 
and, as I described it, piercing through an edge 
of avalanche, which in its retiring had left the 
new ground brown and lifeless, and as if burned 
by recent fire; the plant was poor and feeble, 
and seemingly exhausted with its efforts, but it 
was then that I comprehended its ideal character, 
and saw its noble function and order of glory 
among the constellations of the earth. 



THE PRINCIPLES OF GOOD GOVERNMENT. 

One of the frescoes by Ambrozio Lorenzetti, 
in the townhall of Siena, represents, by means 



33^ PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

of symbolical figures, the principles of Good 
Civic Government and of Good Government 
in general. The figure representing this noble 
Civic Government is enthroned, and sur- 
rounded by figures representing the Virtues," 
variously supporting or administering its author- 
ity. Now, observe what work is given to each 
of these virtues. Three winged ones — Faith, 
Hope, and Charity — surrounded the head of the 
figure, not in mere compliance with the com- 
mon and heraldic laws of precedence among 
Virtues, such as we moderns observe habitu- 
ally, but with peculiar purpose on the part of 
the painter. Faith, as thus represented, ruling 
the thoughts of the Good Governor, does not 
mean merely religious faith, understood in those 
times to be necessary to all persons — governed 
no less than governors — but it means the faith 
which enables work to be carried out steadily, in 
spite of adverse appearances and expediencies, 
the faith in great principles, by which a civic 
ruler looks past all the immediate checks and 
shadows that would daunt a common man, know- 
ing that what is rightly done will have a right 
issue, and holding his way in spite of pullings at 
his cloak and whisperings in his ear, enduring, 
as having in him a faith which is evidence 
of things unseen. And Hope, in like manner, is 
here not the heavenward hope which ought to 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 2>2>7 

animate the hearts of all men; but she attends 
upon Good Government, to show that all such 
government is expectant as well as conservative ; 
that if it ceases to be hopeful of better things, it 
ceases to be a wise guardian of present things: 
that it ought never, as long as the world lasts, to 
be wholly content with any existing state of in- 
stitution or possession, but to be hopeful still of 
more wisdom and power; not clutching at it 
restlessly or hastily, but feeling that its real life 
consists in steady ascent from high to higher: 
conservative, indeed, and jealously conservative 
of old things, but conservative of them as pillars, 
not as pinnacles — as aids, but not as Idols; and 
hopeful chiefly, and active, in times of national 
trial or distress, according to those first and 
notable words describing the queenly nation. 
"She riseth, ivhile it is yet night'' And again, 
the winged Charity which is attendant on Good 
Government has, in this fresco, a peculiar office. 
Can you guess what? If you consider the char- 
acter of contest which so often takes place 
among kings for their crowns, and the selfish 
and tyrannous means they commonly take to 
aggrandize or secure their power, you will, per- 
haps, be surprised to hear that the office of 
Charity is to crown the King. And yet, if you 
think of it a little, you will see the beauty of the 
thought which sets her in this function: since in 



338 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

the first place, all the authority of a good gov- 
ernor should be desired by him only for the 
good of his people, so that it is only Love that 
makes him accept or guard his crown: in the 
Second place, his chief greatness consists in the 
exercise of this love, and he is truly to be revered 
only so far as his acts and thoughts are those of 
kindness; so that Love is the light of his crown, 
as well as the giver of it: lastly, because his 
strength depends on the affections of his people, 
and it is only their love which can securely 
crown him, and for ever. So that Love is the 
strength of his crown as well as the light of it. 

Then, surrounding the King, or in various 
obedience to him, appear the dependent virtues, 
as Fortitude, Temperance, Truth, and other 
attendant spirits, of all which I cannot now give 
account, wishing you only to notice the one to 
whom are entrusted the guidance and adminis- 
tration of the public revenues. Can you guess 
which it is likely to be? Charity, you would 
have thought, should have something to do with 
the business; but not so, for she is too hot to 
attend carefully to it. Prudence, perhaps, you 
think of in the next place. No, she is too timid, 
and loses opportunities in making up her mind. 
Can it be Liberality then? No: Liberality is 
entrusted with some small sums; but she is a 
bad accountant, and is allowed no important 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 33Q 

place in the excheciuer. But the treasures are 
given in charge to a virtue of which we hear too 
little in modern times, as distinct from others; 
Magnanimity: largeness of heart: not softness or 
weakness of heart, mind you — but capacity oi 
heart — the great 77icasuring virtue, which weighs 
in heavenly balances all that may be given, and 
all that may be gained; and sees how to do 
noblest things in noblest ways: which of two 
goods comprehends and therefore chooses the 
greatest: which of two personal sacrifices dares 
and accepts the largest: which, out of the avenues 
of beneficence, treads always that which opens 
farthest into the blue fields of futurity: that 
character, in fine, which, in those words taken by 
us at first for the description of a Queen among 
the nations, looks less to the present power than 
to the distant promise; "Strength and honour 
are in her clothing, — and she shall rejoice in 

TIME TO COME." 



ASSIMILATION AND INDIVIDUALITY. 

It is a lamentable and unnatural thing to see a 
number of men subject to no government, actu- 
ated by no ruling principle, and associated i)y 
no common affection: but it would be a more 
lamentable thing still, were it possible, to see a 



340 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

number of men so oppressed into assimilation as 
to have no more any individual hope or charac- 
ter, no differences in aim, no dissimilarities of 
passion, no irregularities of judgment; a society 
in which no man could help another, since none 
would be feebler than himself; no man admire 
another, since none would be stronger than him- 
self; no man be grateful to another, since by 
none he could be relieved; no man reverence 
another, since by none he could be instructed; 
a society in which every soul would be as the 
syllable of a stammerer instead of the word of a 
speaker, in which every man would walk as in a 
frightful dream, seeing spectres of himself, in 
everlasting multiplication, gliding helplessly 
around him in a speechless darkness. There- 
fore it is that perpetual difference, play, and 
change in groups of form are more essential to 
them even than their being subdued by some 
great gathering law: the law is needful to them 
for their perfection and their power, but the dif- 
ference is needful to them for their life. 



A SOLEMN WARNING. 

The phases of transition in the moral temper 
of the falling Venetians, during their fall, were 
from pride to infidelity, and from infidelity to 
the unscrupulous pursuit of pleasure. During 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 341 

the last years of the existence of the state, the 
minds both of the nobility and the people seem 
to have been set simply upon the attainment of 
the means of self-indulgence. There was not 
strength enough in them to be proud, nor fore- 
thought enough to be ambitious. One by one 
the possessions of the state were abandoned to 
its enemies; one by one the channels of its trade 
Were forsaken by its own languor, or occupied and 
closed against it by its more energetic rivals; 
and the time, the resources, and the thoughts of 
the nation were exclusively occupied in the in- 
vention of such fantastic and costly pleasures as 
might best amuse their apathy, lull their remorse, 
or disguise their ruin. 

It is as needless, as it is painful, to trace the 
steps of her final ruin. That ancient curse was 
upon her, the curse of the cities of the plain, 
" Pride, fulness of bread, and abundance of 
idleness." By the inner burning of her own 
passions, as fatal as the fiery rain of Gomorrah, 
she was consumed from her place among the 
nations; and her ashes are choking the channels 
of the dead salt sea. 



LIFE. 



Among the countless analogies by which the 
nature and relations of the human soul are illus- 



342 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

trated in the material creation, none are more 
striking than the impressions inseparably con- 
nected with the active and dormant states of 
matter. I have elsewhere endeavoured to show, 
that no inconsiderable part of the essential char- 
acters of Beauty depended on the expression of 
vital energy in organic things, or on the subjec- 
tion to such energy, of things naturall} passive 
and powerless. I need not here repeat, of what 
was then advanced, more than the statement 
which I believe will meet with general accept- 
ance, that things in other respects alike, as in 
their substance, or uses, or outward forms, are 
noble or ignoble in proportion to the fulness of 
the life which either they themselves enjoy, or of 
whose action they bear the evidence, as sea 
sands are made beautiful by their bearing the 
seal of the motion of the waters. And this is 
especially true of all objects which bear upon 
them the impress of the highest order of crea- 
tive life, that is to say, of the mind of man : 
they become noble or ignoble in proportion to 
the amount of the energy of that mind which 
has visibly been employed upon them. But most 
peculiarly and imperatively does the rule hold 
with respect to the creations of Architecture, 
which being properly capable of no other life 
than this, and being not essentially composed of 
things pleasant in themselves, — as music of sweet 



PRECIOUS THOUGH IS. 343 

sounds, or painting of fair colours, but of inert 
substance, — depend, for their dignity and pleas- 
urableness in the utmost degree, upon the vivid 
expression of the intellectual life which has been 
concerned in their production. 

Now in all other kind of energies except that 
of man's mind, there is no question as to what is 
life, and what is not. Vital sensibility, whether 
vegetable or animal, may, indeed, be reduced to 
so great feebleness, as to render its existence a 
matter of question, but when it i evident at all, 
it is evident as such: there is no mistaking any 
imitation or pretence of it for the life itself; 
no mechanism nor galvanism can take its place; 
nor is any resemblance of it so striking as to in- 
volve even hesitation in the judgment; although 
many occur which the human imagination takes 
pleasure in exalting, without for an instant losing 
sight of the real nature of the dead things it ani- 
mates; but rejoicing rather in its own excessive 
life, which puts gesture into clouds, and joy into 
waves, and voices into rocks. 

But when we begin to be concerned with the 
energies of man, we find ourselves instantly deal- 
ing with a double creature. Most part of his 
being seems to have a fictitious counterpart, 
which it is at his peril if he do not cast off and 
deny. Thus he has a true and false (otherwise 
called a living and dead, or a feigned or un- 



344 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

feigned) faith. He has a true and a false hope* a 
true and a false charity, and, finally, a true and a 
false life. His true life is like that of lower or- 
ganic beings, the independent force by which he 
moulds and governs external things; it is a force 
of assimilation which converts everything around 
him into food, or into instruments; and which, 
however humbly or obediendy it may listen to or 
follow the guidance of superior intelligence, never 
forfeits its own authority as a judging principle, 
as a will capable either of obeying or rebelling. 
His false life is, indeed, but one of the condi- 
tions of death or stupor, but it acts, even when 
it cannot be said to animate, and is not always 
easily known from the true. It is that life of 
custom and accident in which many of us pass 
much of our time in the world; that life in which 
we do what we have not purposed, and speak 
what we do not mean, and assent to what we do 
not understand; that life which is overlaid by the 
weight of things external to it, and is moulded by 
them, instead of assimilating them; that, which 
instead of growing and blossoming under any 
wholesome dew, is crystallised over with it, as 
with hoar frost, and becomes to the true life what 
an arborescence is to a tree, a candied agglomer- 
ation of thoughts and habits foreign to it, brittle, 
obstinate, and icy, which can neither bend nor 
grow, but must be crushed and broken to bits, if 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 345 

it stand in our way. All men are liable to be in 
some degree frost-bitten in this sort; all are partly 
encumbered and crusted over with idle matter; 
only, if they have real life in them, they are al- 
ways breaking this bark away in noble rents, until 
it becomes, like the black strips upon the birch- 
tree, only a witness of their own inward strength. 
But, with all the efforts that the best men make, 
much of their being passes in a kind of dream, 
in which they indeed move, and play their parts 
sufficiently, to the eyes of their fellow-dreamers, 
but have no clear consciousness of what is around 
them, or within them; blind to the one, insensi- 
ble to the other, vaodpoi. I would not press 
the definition into its darker application to the 
dull heart and heavy ear; I have to do with it 
only as it refers to the too frequent condition of 
natural existence, whether of nations or individ- 
uals, settling commonly upon them in proportion 
to their age. The life of a nation is usually, like 
the flow of a lava stream, first bright and fierce, 
then languid and covered, at last advancing only 
by the tumbling over and over of its frozen 
blocks. And that last condition is a sad one to 
look upon. All the steps are marked most clearly 
in the arts, and in Architecture more than in any 
other; for it, being especially dependent, as we 
have just said, on the warmth of the true life, is 
also peculiarly sensible of the hemlock cold of 



346 FRECIOUS THOUGHTS, 

the false, and I do not know anything more op- 
pressive, when the mind is once awakened to its 
characteristics, than the aspect of a dead archi- 
tecture. The feebleness of childhood is full of 
promise and of interest, — the struggle of imper- 
fect knowledge full of energy and continuity, — 
but to see impotence and rigidity settling upon 
the form of the developed man; to see the types 
which once had the die of thought struck fresh 
upon them, worn flat by overuse; to see the shell 
of the living creature in its adult form, when its 
colours are faded, and its inhabitant perished, — 
this is a sight more humiliating, more melan- 
choly, than the vanishing of all knowledge, and 
the return to confessed and helpless infancy. 



LOVE AND FEAR. 

Two great and principal passions are evidently 
appointed by the Deity to rule the life of man; 
namely, the love of God, and the fear of sin, and 
of its companion — Death. How many motives 
we have for Love, how much there is in the uni- 
verse to kindle our admiration and to claim our 
gratitude, there are, happily, multitudes among 
us who both feel and teach. But it has not, I 
think, been sufficiently considered how evident, 
throughout the system of creation, is the pur- 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. S47 

pose of God that we should often be affected 
by Fear; not the sudden, selfish, and contempt- 
ible fear of immediate danger, but the fear which 
arises out of the contemplation of great powers 
in destructive operation, and generally from the 
perception of the presence of death. Nothing 
appears to me more remarkable than [the array 
of scenic magnificence by which the imagination 
is appalled, in myriads of instances, when the 
actual danger is comparatively small; so that 
the utmost possible impression of awe shall be 
produced upon the minds of all, though direct 
suffering is inflicted upon few. Consider, for 
instance, the moral effect of a single thunder- 
storm. Perhaps two or three persons may be 
struck dead within the space of a hundred 
square miles; and their deaths, unaccompanied 
by the scenery of the storm, would produce 
little more than a momentary sadness in the busy 
hearts of living men. But the preparation for 
the Judgment, by all that mighty gathering of 
clouds; by the questioning of the forest leaves, 
in their terrified stillness, which way the winds 
shall go forth; by the murmuring to each other, 
deep in the distance, of the destroying angels 
before they draw forth their swords of fire; by 
the march of the funeral darkness in the midst 
of the noon-day, and the rattling of the dome of 
heaven beneath the chariot-wheels of death; — on 



348 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

how many minds do not these produce an im- 
pression almost as great as the actual witnessing 
of the fatal issue! and how strangely are the ex- 
pressions of the threatening elements fitted to 
the apprehension of the human soul! The lurid 
colour, the long, irregular, convulsive sound, the 
ghastly shapes of flaming and heaving cloud, are 
all as true and faithful in their appeal to our in- 
stinct of danger, as the moaning or wailing of the 
human voice itself is to our instinct of pity. It 
is not a reasonable calculating terror which they 
awake in us; it is no matter that we count dis- 
tance by seconds, and measure probability by 
averages. That shadow of the thunder-cloud 
will still do its work upon our hearts, and we 
shall watch its passing av/ay as if we stood upon 
the threshing-floor of Araunah. 

And this is equally the case with respect to all 
the other destructive phenomena of the universe. 
From the mightiest of them to the gentlest, from 
the earthquake to the summer shower, it will be 
found that they are attended by certain aspects 
of threatening, which strike terror into the hearts 
of multitudes more numerous a thousandfold than 
those v/ho actually suffer from the ministries of 
judgment; and that besides the fearfulness of 
these immediately dangerous phenomena,j there 
is an occult and subtle horror belonging to many 
aspects of the creation around us, calculated often 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 349 

to fill us with serious thought, even in our times 
of quietness and peace.* 



INVOLUNTARY INSTRUMENTS OF GOOD. 

Wherever we see the virtue of ardent labour 
and self-surrendering to a single purpose, wher- 
ever we find constant reference made to the 
written scripture of natural beauty, this at least 
we know is great and good, this we know is not 
granted by the counsel of God, without purpose, 
nor maintained without result: Their interpreta- 
tion we may accept, into their labour we may 
enter, but they themselves must look to it, if 
what they do has no intent of good, nor any ref- 
erence to the Giver of all gifts. Selfish in their 
industry, unchastened in their wills, ungrateful 
for the Spirit that is upon them, they may yet be 
helmed by that Spirit whithersoever the Governor 
listeth; involuntary instruments they may be- 
come of others' good; unwillingly they may bless 

* The Love of God is, however, always shown by the 
predominance or greater sum of good in the end; but 
never by the annihilation of evil. The modern doubts of 
eternal punishment are not so much the consequence of 
benevolence as of feeble powers of reasoning. Every one 
admits that God brings finite good out of finite evil. 
Why not, therefore, infinite good out of infinite evil ? 



350 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

Israel, doubtingly discomfit Amalek, but short- 
coming there will be of their glory, and sure, of 
their punishment. 



THE SPIRIT OF SACRIFICE. 

It seems to me, not only that this feeling is in 
most cases wholly wanting in those who forward 
the devotional buildings of the present day; but 
that it would even be regarded as an ignorant, 
dangerous, or perhaps criminal principle by many 
among us. I have not space to enter into dis- 
pute of all the various objections which may be 
urged against it — they are many and specious; 
but I may, perhaps, ask the reader's patience 
while I set down those simple reasons which 
cause me to believe it a good and just feeling, 
and as well-pleasing to God and honourable in 
men, as it is beyond all dispute necessary to the 
production of any great work in the kind with 
which we are at present concerned. 

Now, first, to define this Spirit of Sacrifice, 
clearly. I have said that it prompts us to the 
offering of precious things, merely because they 
are precious, not because they are useful or nec- 
essary. It is a spirit, for instance, which of two 
marbles, equally beautiful, applicable, and dur- 
able, would choose the more costly, because it 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 351 

was so, and of two kinds of decoration, equally 
effective, would choose the more elaborate be- 
cause it was so, in order that it might in the same 
compass present more cost and more thought. 
It is therefore most unreasoning and enthusiastic, 
and perhaps best negatively defined, as the oppo- 
site of the prevalent feeling of modern time, 
which desires to produce the largest results at the 
least cost. 

Of this feeling, then, there are two distinct 
forms: the first, the wish to exercise self-denial 
for the sake of self-discipline merely, a wish 
acted upon in the abandonment of things loved 
or desired, there being no direct call or purpose 
to be answered by so doing; and the second, the 
desire to honour or please some one else by the 
costliness of the sacrifice. The practice is, in 
the first case, either private or public; but most 
frequently, and perhaps most properly, private; 
while, in the latter case, the act is commonly, 
and with greatest advantage, public. Now, it 
cannot but at first appear futile to assert the ex- 
pediency of self-denial for its own sake, when, 
for so many sakes, it is every day necessary to a 
far greater degree than any of us practise it. 
But I believe it is just because we do not enough 
acknowledge or contemplate it as a good in it- 
self, that we are apt to fail in its duties w^hen 
they become imperative, and to calculate, with 



352 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

some partiality, whether the good proposed to 
others measures or warrants the amount of griev- 
ance to ourselves, instead of accepting with glad- 
ness the opportunity of sacrifice as a personal 
advantage. Be this as it may, it is not necessary 
to insist upon the matter here; since there are 
always higher and more useful channels of self- 
sacrifice, for those who choose to practise it, 
than any connected with the arts. 

While in its second branch, that which is 
especially concerned with the arts, the justice of 
the feeling is still more doubtful; it depends on 
our answer to the broad question, can the Deity 
be indeed honoured by the presentation to Him 
of any material objects of value, or by any direc 
tion of zeal or wisdom which is not immediately 
beneficial to men? 

For, observe, it is not now the question whether 
the fairness and majesty of a building may or 
may not answer any moral purpose; it is not the 
result of labour in any sort of which we are speak- 
ing, but the bare and mere costliness — the sub- 
stance and labour and time themselves: are 
these, we ask, independently of their result, ac- 
ceptable offerings to God, and considered by 
Him as doing Him honour ? So long as we refer 
this question to the decision of feeling, or of 
conscience, or of reason merely, it will be contra- 
dictorily or imperfectly answered; it admits of 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 353 

entire answer only when we have met another 
and a far different question, whether the Bible be 
indeed one book or two, and whether the charac- 
ter of God revealed in the Old Testament be 
other than His character revealed in the New. 

Now, it is a most secure truth, that, although 
the particular ordinances divinely appointed for 
special purposes at any given period of man's 
history, may be by the same divine authority 
abrogated at another, it is impossible that any 
character of God, appealed to or described in any 
ordinance past or present, can ever be changed, 
or understood as changed, by the abrogation of 
that ordinance. God is one and the same, and 
is pleased or displeased by the same thing for 
ever, although one part of His pleasure may be 
expressed at one time rather than another, and 
although the mode in which His pleasure is to 
be consulted may be by Him graciously modified 
to the circumstances of men. Thus, for instance, 
it was necessary that, in order to the understand- 
ing by man of the scheme of Redemption, that 
scheme should be foreshown from the beginning 
by the type of bloody sacrifice. But God had no 
more pleasure in such sacrifice in the time of 
Moses than He has now; He never accepted as 
a propitiation for sin any sacrifice but the single 
one in prospective; and that we may not enter- 
tain any shadow of doubt on this subject, the 



354 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

worthlessness of all other sacrifice than this is 
proclaimed at the very time when typical sacrifice 
was most imperatively demanded. God was a 
spirit, and could be worshipped only in spirit and 
in truth, as singly and exclusively when every day 
brought its claim of typical and material service 
or offering, as now when He asks for none but 
that of the heart. 

So, therefore, it is a most safe and sure princi- 
ple that, if in the manner of performing any rite 
at any time, circumstances can be traced which 
we are either told, or may legitimately conclude, 
pleased God at that time, those same circumN 
stances will please Him at all times, in the 
performance of all rites or offices to which they 
may be attached in like manner; unless it has 
been afterwards revealed that, for some special 
purpose, it is now His will that such circum. 
stances should be withdrawn. And this argument 
will have all the more force if it can be shown 
that such conditions were not essential to the 
completeness of the rite in its human uses and 
bearings, and only were added to it as being ii\ 
themselves pleasing to God. 

Now, was it necessary to the completeness, as 
a type, of the Levitical sacrifice, or to its utility as 
an explanation of divine purposes, that it should 
cost anything to the person in whose behalf it 
was offered? On the contrary, the sacrifice 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 355 

which it foreshowed, was to be God's free gift; 
and the cost of, or difficulty of obtaining, the 
sacrificial type, could only render that type in a 
measure obscure, and less expressive of the offer- 
ing which God would in the end provide for all 
men. Yet this costliness was generally a con- 
dition of the acceptableness of the sacrifice. 
" Neither will I offer unto the Lord my God of 
that which doth cost me nothing." That costli- 
ness, therefore, must be an acceptable condition 
in all human offerings at all times; for if it was 
pleasing to God once, it must please Him always, 
unless directly forbidden by Him afterwards, 
which it has never been. 

Again, was it necessary to the typical perfec- 
tion of the Levitical offering, that it should be 
the best of the flock? Doubtless the spotlessness 
of the sacrifice renders it more expressive to the 
Christian mind; but was it because so expressive 
that it was actually, and in so many words, de- 
manded by God? Not at all. It was demanded 
by Him expressly on the same grounds on which 
an earthly governor would demand it, as a testi- 
mony of respect. " Offer it now unto thy gov- 
ernor." And the less valuable offering was re- 
jected, not because it did not image Christ, nor 
fulfil the purposes of sacrifice, but because it 
indicated a feeling that would grudge the best of 
its possessions to Him who gave them; and 



35^ PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

because it was a bold dishonouring of God in the 
sight of man. Whence it may be infahibly con- 
cluded, that in whatever offerings we may now 
see reason to present unto God (I say not what 
these may be), a condition of their acceptableness 
will be now, as it was then, that they should be 
the best of their kind. 

But farther, was it necessary to the carrying 
out of the Mosaical system, that there should be 
either art or splendour in the form or services of 
the tabernacle or temple? Was it necessary to 
the perfection of any one of their typical offices, 
that there should be that hanging of blue, and 
purple, and scarlet? those taches of brass and 
sockets of silver? that working in cedar and over- 
laying with gold? One thing at least is evident: 
there was a deep and awful danger in it; a 
danger that the God whom they so worshipped, 
might be associated in the minds of the serfs of 
Egypt with the gods to whom they had seen 
similar gifts offered and similar honours paid. 
The probability, in our times, of fellowship with 
the feelings of the idolatrous Romanist is abso- 
lutely as nothing compared with the danger to 
the Israelite of a sympathy with the idolatrous 
Egyptian; no speculative, no unproved danger; 
but proved fatally by their fall during a month's 
abandonment to their own will; a fall into the 
most servile idolatry; yet marked by such offer- 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 357 

ings to their idol as their leader was, in the close 
sequel, instructed to bid them offer to God. 
This danger was imminent, perpetual, and of the 
most awful kind: it was the one against which 
God made provision, not only by commandments, 
by threatenings, by promises, the most urgent, re- 
peated, and impressive; but by temporary ordi- 
nances of a severity so terrible as almost to dim 
for a time, in the eyes of His people, His attri- 
bute of mercy. 



HUMAN LIFE. 

At the debate of King Edwin with his cour- 
tiers and priests, whether he ought to receive the 
Gospel preached to him by Paulinus, one of his 
nobles spoke as follows: — 

" The present life, O king! weighed with the 
time that is unknown, seems to me like this. 
When you are sitting at a feast with your earls 
and thanes in winter time, and the fire is lighted, 
and the hall is warmed, and it rains and snows, 
and the storm is loud without, there comes a 
sparrow, and flies through the house. It comes 
in at one door, and goes out at the other. While 
it is within, it is not touched by the winter's 
storm; but it is but for the twinkling of an eye, 
for from winter it comes and to winter it returns. 



358 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

So also this life of man endureth for a little space; 
what goes before, or what follows after, we know 
not. Wherefore, if this new lore bring anything 
more certain, it is fit that we should follow it." 

Hear another story of those early times. 

The king of Jerusalem, Godfrey of Bouillon, 
at the siege of Asshur, or Arsur, gave audience 
to some emirs from Samaria and Naplous. They 
found him seated on the ground on a sack of 
straw. They expressing surprise, Godfrey an- 
swered them: " May not the earth, out of which 
we came, and which is to be our dwelling after 
death, serve us for a seat during life?" 

It is long since such a throne has been set in 
the reception-chambers of Christendom, or such 
an answer heard from the lips of a king. 



ASCETICISM. 



Three principal forms of asceticism have ex- 
isted in this weak world. Religious asceticism, 
being the refusal of pleasure and knowledge for 
the sake (as supposed) of religion; seen chiefly 
in the middle ages. Military asceticism, being 
the refusal of pleasure and knowledge for the 
sake of power; seen chiefly in the early days of 
Sparta and Rome. And monetary asceticism, 
consisting in the refusal of pleasure and knowl- 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 359 

edge for the sake of money; seen in the present 
days of London and Manchester. 

" We do not come here to look at the moun- 
tains," said the Carthusian to me at the Grande 
Chartreuse. "We do not come here to look at 
the mountains," the Austrian generals would say, 
encamping by the shores of Garda. " We do not 
come here to look at the mountains," so the 
thriving manufacturers tell me, between Rochdale 
and Halifax. 

All these asceticisms have their bright and 
their dark sides. I myself like the military as- 
ceticism best, because it is not so necessarily a 
refusal of general knowledge as the two others, 
but leads to acute and marvellous use of mind, 
and perfect use of body. Nevertheless, none of 
the three are a healthy or central state of man. 
There is much to be respected in each, but they 
are not what we should wish large numbers of 
men to become. A monk of La Trappe, a 
French soldier of the Imperial Guard, and a 
thriving mill-owner, supposing each a type, and 
no more than a type, of his class, are all interest- 
ing specimens of humanity, but narrow ones, — 
so narrow that even all the three together would 
not make a perfect man. Nor does it appear in 
any way desirable that either of the three classes 
should extend itself so as to include a majority 
of the persons in the world. 



3^0 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 



CHEERFULNESS. 

Cheerfulness is just as natural to the heart of 
a man in strong health as color to his cheek; 
and wherever there is habitual gloom, there must 
be either bad air, unwholesome food, improperly 
severe labour, or erring habits of life. 



FANCY AND REALITY. 

Be assured of the great truth — that what is 
impossible in reality is ridiculous in fancy. If it 
is not in the nature of things that peasants should 
be gentle and happy, then the imagination of 
such peasantry is ridiculous, and to delight in 
such imagination wrong; as delight in any 
kind of falsehood is always. But if in the nature 
of things it be possible that among the wildness 
of hills the human heart should be refined, and 
if the comfort of dress, and the gentleness of 
language, and the joy of progress in knowledge, 
and of variety in thought, [are ^possible to the 
mountaineer in his true existence, let us strive to 
write this true poetry upon the rocks before we 
indulge it in our visions, and try whether, among 
all the fine arts, one of the finest be not that of 
painting cheeks with health rather than rouge. 

" But is such refinement possible? "^o not the 



PI^ECIOUS THOUGHTS. 3^1 

conditions of the mountain peasant's life, in the 
plurality of instances, necessarily forbid it?" 

As bearing sternly on this question, it is nec- 
essary to examine one peculiarity of feeling which 
manifests itself among the European nations, so 
far as I have noticed, irregularly, — appearing 
sometimes to be the characteristic of a particular 
time, sometimes of a particular race, sometimes of 
a particular locality, and to involve at once much 
that is to be blamed and much that is praise- 
worthy. I mean the capability of enduring, or 
even delighting in, the contemplation of objects 
of terror — a sentiment which especially influences 
the temper of some groups of mountaineers, and 
of which it is necessary to examine the causes, 
before we can form any conjecture whatever as to 
the real effect of mountains on human character. 

For instance, the unhappy alterations which 
have lately taken place in the town of Lucerne 
have still spared two of its ancient bridges; both 
of which, being long covered walks, appear, in 
past times, to have been to the population of the 
town what the Mall was to London, or the 
Gardens of the Tuileries are to Paris. For the 
continual contemplation of those who sauntered 
from pier to pier, pictures were painted on the 
woodwork of the roof. These pictures, in the 
one bridge, represent all the important Swiss bat- 
tles and victories; in the other they are the well- 



362 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

known series of which Longfellow has made so 
beautiful a use in the Golden Legend, the Dance 
of Death. 

Imagine the countenances with which a com- 
mittee, appointed for the establishment of a new 
" promenade " in some flourishing modern town, 
would receive a proposal to adorn such prome- 
nade with pictures of the Dance of Death. 

Now just so far as the old bridge at Lucerne, 
with the pure, deep, and blue water of the Reuss 
eddying down between its piers, and with the 
sweet darkness of green hills, and far-away 
gleaming of lake and Alps alternating upon the 
eye on either side; and the gloomy lesson frown- 
ing in the shadow, as if the deep tone of a pass- 
ing-bell, overhead, were mingling for ever with 
the plashing of the river as it glides by beneath; 
just so far, I say, as this differs from the straight 
and smooth strip of level dust, between two rows 
of round topped acacia trees, wherein the inhabi- 
tants of an English watering-place or French 
fortified town take their delight, — so far I believe 
the life of the old Lucernois, with all its happy 
waves of light, and mountain strength of will, 
and solemn expectation of eternity, to have dif- 
fered from the generality of the lives of those 
who saunter for their habitual hour up and down 
the modern promenade. But the gloom is not 
always of this noble kind. As we penetrate 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 363 

farther among the hills we shall find it becoming 
very painful. We are walking, perhaps, in a 
summer afternoon, up the valley of Zermatt (a 
German valley), the sun shining brightly on 
grassy knolls and through fringes of pines, the 
goats leaping happily, and the cattle bells ring- 
ing sweetly, and the snowy mountains shining 
like heavenly castles far above. We see, a little 
way off, a small white chapel, sheltered behind 
one of the flowery hillocks of mountain turf; and 
we approach its little window, thinking to look 
through it into some quiet home of prayer; but 
the window is grated with iron, and open to the 
winds, and when we look through it, behold — a 
heap of white human bones mouldering into 
whiter dust! 

So also in that same sweet valley, of which I 
have just been speaking, between Chamouni and 
the Valais, at every turn of the pleasant path- 
way, where the scent of the thyme lies richest 
upon its rocks, we shall see a little cross and 
shrine set under one of them; and go up to it, 
hoping to receive some happy thought of the 
Redeemer, by whom all these lovely things were 
made, and still consist. But when we come 
near — behold, beneath the cross, a rude picture 
of souls tormented in red tongues of hell fire, and 
pierced by demons. 

As we paos towards Italy the appearance 



364 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS, 

of this gloom deepens; and when we descend 
the southern slope of the Alps we shall find this 
bringing forward of the image of Death asso- 
ciated with an endurance of the most painful 
aspects of disease; so that conditions of human 
suffering, which in any other country would 
be confined in hospitals, are permitted to be 
openly exhibited by the wayside; and with this 
exposure of the degraded human form is farther 
connected an insensibility to ugliness and imper- 
fection in other things; so that the ruined wall, 
neglected garden, and uncleansed chamber, seem 
to unite in expressing a gloom of spirit possess- 
ing the inhabitants of the whole land. It does 
not appear to arise from poverty, nor careless 
contentment with little: there is here nothing of 
Irish recklessness or humour; but there seems a 
settled obscurity in the soul, — a chill and plague, 
as if risen out of a sepulchre, which partly 
deadens, partly darkens, the eyes and hearts of 
men, and breathes a leprosy of decay through 
every breeze and every stone. " Instead of well- 
set hair, baldness, and burning instead of beauty." 
Nor are definite proofs wanting that the feel- 
ing is independent of mere poverty or indolence. 
In the most gorgeous and costly palace garden 
the statues will be found green with moss, the 
terraces defaced or broken; the palace itself, 
partly coated with marble, is left in other places 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 365 

rough with cementless and jagged brick, its iron 
balconies bent and rusted, its pavements over- 
grown with grass. The more energetic the effort 
has been to recover from this state, and to shake 
off all appearance of poverty, the more assuredly 
the curse seems to fasten on the scene, and the 
unslaked mortar, and unfinished wall, and ghastly 
desolation of incompleteness, entangled in decay, 
strike a deeper despondency into the beholder. 

The feeling would be also more easily ac- 
counted for if it appeared consistent in its re- 
gardlessness of beauty, — if what was done were 
altogether as inefficient as what was deserted. 
But the balcony, though rusty and broken, is 
delicate in design, and supported on a nobly 
carved slab of marble; the window, though 
a mere black rent in ragged plaster, is encircled 
by a garland of vine and fronted by a thicket of 
the sharp leaves and aurora-coloured flowers of 
the oleander; the court-yard, overgrown by 
mournful grass, is terminated by a bright fresco 
of gardens and fountains; the corpse, borne with 
the bare face to heaven, is strewn with flowers; 
beauty is continually mingled with the shadow of 
death. 

So also is a kind of merriment, — not true 
cheerfulness, neither careless or idle jesting, but 
a determined effort at gaiety, a resolute laughter, 
mixed with much satire, grossness, and practical 



66 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 



buffoonery, and, it always seemed to me, void of 
all comfort or hope, — with this eminent charac- 
ter in it also, that it is capable of touching with 
its bitterness even the most fearful subjects, so 
that as the love of beauty retains its tenderness 
in the presence of death, this love of jest also 
retains its boldness, and the skeleton becomes 
one of the standard masques of the Italian 
comedy. When I was in Venice, in 1850, the 
most popular piece of the comic opera was 
'' Death and the Cobbler," in which the point of 
the plot was the success of a village cobbler as a 
physician, in consequence of the appearance of 
Death to him beside the bed of every patient 
who was not to recover; and the most applauded 
scene in it was one in which the physician, inso- 
lent in success, and swollen with luxury, was 
himself taken down into the abode of Death, and 
thrown into an agony of terror by being shown 
lives of men, under the form of wasting lamps, 
and his own ready to expire. 



THE PRESENCE OF GOD. 

The reason that preaching is so commonly in- 
effectual is, that it calls on men oftener to work 
for God, than to behold God working for them. 
In every rebuke that we utter of men's vices, we 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 367 

]Hit forth a claim upon their hearts: if for every 
assertion of God's demands from them, we could 
substitute a display of his kindness to them; if 
side by side with every warning of death, we 
could exhibit proofs and promises of immor- 
tality; if, in fine, instead of assuming the being 
of an awful Deity, which men, though they can- 
not and dare not deny, are always unwilling, 
sometimes unable, to conceive, we were to show 
them a near, visible, inevitable, but all-beneficent 
Deity, whose presence makes the earth itself a 
heaven, I think there would be fewer deaf chil- 
dren sitting in the market-place. At all events, 
whatever may be the inability in this present life 
to mingle the full enjoyment of the Divine works 
with the full discharge of every practical duty, 
and confessedly in many cases this must be, let 
us not a.ttribute the inconsistency to any indig- 
nity of the faculty of contemplation, but to the 
sin and the suffering of the fallen state, and the 
change of order from the keeping of the garden 
to the tilling of the ground. We cannot say how 
far it is right or agreeable with God's will, while 
men are perishing round about us, while grief, 
and pain, and wrath, and impiety, and death, and 
all the powers of the air, are working wildly and 
evermore, and the cry of blood going up to 
heaven, that any of us should take hand from 
the plough; but this we know, that there will 



368 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

come a time when the service of God shall be 
the beholding of him; and though in these 
stormy seas, where we are now driven up and 
down, his Spirit is dimly seen on the face of the 
waters, and we are left to cast anchors out of 
the stern, and wish for the day, that day will 
come, when, with the evangelists on the crystal 
and stable sea, all the creatures of God shall be 
full of eyes within, and there shall be " no more 
curse, but his servants shall serve him, and shall 
see his face." 



MILTON S AND DANTE S SATAN. 

It is not possible to express intense wicked- 
ness without some condition of degradation. 
Malice, subtlety, and pride, in their extreme, 
cannot be written upon noble forms; and I am 
aware of no effort to represent the Satanic mind 
in the angelic form, which has succeeded in 
painting. Milton Succeeds only because he sep- 
arately describes the movements of the mind, 
and therefore leaves himself at liberty to make 
the form heroic; but that form is never dis- 
tinct enough to be painted. Dante, who will not 
leave even external forms obscure, degrades 
them before he can feel them to be demoniacal; 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 369 

so also John Bunyan: both of them, I think, 
having firmer faith than Milton's in their own 
creations, and deeper insight into the nature of 
sin. Milton makes his fiends too noble, and 
misses the foulness, inconsistency, and fury of 
wickedness. His Satan possesses some virtues, 
not the less virtues for being applied to evil pur- 
pose. Courage, resolution, patience, delibera- 
tion in council, this latter being eminently a wise 
and holy character, as opposed to the " Insania" 
or excessive sin: and all this, if not a shallow 
and false, is a smoothed and artistical, concep- 
tion. On the other hand, I have always felt 
that there was a peculiar grandeur in the inde- 
scribable ungovernable fury of Dante's fiends, 
ever shortening its own powers, and disappoint- 
ing its own purposes; the deaf, blind, speechless, 
unspeakable rage, fierce as the lightning, but 
erring from its mark or turning senselessly 
against itself, and still further debased by foul- 
ness of form and action. Something is indeed 
to be allowed for the rude feelings of the time, 
but I believe all such men as Dante are sent 
into the world at the time when they can do 
their work best; and that, it being appointed for 
him to give to mankind the most vigorous reali- 
zation possible both of Hell and Heaven, he 
was born both in the country and at the time 
which furnished the most stern opposition of 



3;o PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

Horror and Beauty, and permitted it to be writ- 
ten in the clearest terms. 



MAN S DELIGHT IN GOD S WORKS. 

Let us once comprehend the holier nature of 
the art of man, and begin to look for the mean- 
ing of the spirit, however syllabled, and the 
scene is changed; and we are changed also. 
Those small and dexterous creatures whom once 
we worshipped, those fur-capped divinities with 
sceptres of camel's hair, peering and pouring in 
their one-windowed chambers over the minute 
preciousness of the laboured canvas; how are 
they swept away and crushed into unnoticeable 
darkness! And in their stead, as the walls of 
the dismal rooms that enclosed them, and us, 
are struck by the four winds of Heaven, and 
rent away, and as the world opens to our sight, 
lo! far back into all the depths of time, and 
forth from all the fields that have been sown 
with human life, how the harvest of the dragon's 
teeth is springing! how the companies of the 
gods are ascending out of the earth! The dark 
stones that have so long been the sepulchres of 
thoughts of nations, and the forgotten ruins 
wherein their faith lay charnelled, give up the 
dead that were in them; and beneath the Egyp. 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 371 

tian ranks of sultry and silent rock, and amidst 
the dim golden lights of the Byzantine dome, 
and out of the confused and cold shadows of the 
Northern cloister, behold, the multitudinous 
souls come forth with singing, gazing on us with 
the soft eyes of newly comprehended sympathy, 
and stretching their white arms to us across the 
grave, in the solemn gladness of everlasting 
brotherhood. 

The other danger to which, it was above said, 
we were primarily exposed under our present 
circumstances of life, is the pursuit of vain pleas- 
ure, that is to say, false pleasure; delight, which 
is not indeed delight; as knowledge vainly ac- 
cumulated, is not indeed knowledge. And this 
we are exposed to chiefly in the fact of our ceas- 
ing to be children. For the child does not seek 
false pleasure; its pleasures are true, simple, and 
instinctive: but the youth is apt to abandon his 
early and true delight for vanities, — seeking to 
be like men, and sacrificing his natural and pure 
enjoyments to his pride. In like manner, it 
seems to me that modern civilization sacrifices 
much pure and true pleasure to various forms 
of ostentation from which it can receive no 
fruit. Consider, for a moment, what kind of 
pleasures are open to human nature, undiseased. 
Passing by the consideration of the pleasures of 
the higher affections, which lie at the root of 



3/2 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

everything, and considering the definite and 
practical pleasures of daily life, there is, first, 
the pleasure of doing good; the greatest of all, 
only apt to be despised from not being often 
enough tasted: and then, I know not in what 
order to put them, nor does it matter, — the 
pleasure of gaining knowledge; the pleasure of 
the excitement of imagination and emotion (or 
poetry and passion); and, lastly, the gratification 
of the senses, first of the eye, then of the ear, 
and then of the others in their order. 

All these we are apt to make subservient to 
the desire of praise; nor unwisely, when the 
praise sought is God's and the conscience's: but 
if the sacrifice is made for man's admiration, 
and knowledge is only sought for praise, passion 
repressed or affected for praise, and the arts 
practised for praise, we are feeding on the bit- 
terest apples of Sodom, suffering always ten 
mortifications for one delight. And it seems to 
me, that in the modern civilized world we make 
such sacrifice doubly: first, by labouring for 
merely ambitious purposes; and secondly, which 
is the main point in question, by being ashamed 
of simple pleasure, more especially of the pleas- 
ure in sweet colour and form, a pleasure evi- 
dently so necessary to man's perfectness and 
virtue, that the beauty of colour and form has 
been given lavishly throughout the whole of crea- 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 373 

tion, so that it may become the food of all, and 
with such intricacy and subtlety that it may 
deeply employ the thoughts of all. If we refuse 
to accept the natural delight which the Deity 
has thus provided for us, we must either become 
ascetics, or we must seek for some base and 
guilty pleasures to replace those of Paradise, 
which we have denied ourselves. 

Some years ago, in passing through some of 
the cells of the Grand Chartreuse, noticing that 
the window of each apartment looked across the 
little garden of its inhabitant to the wall of the 
cell opposite, and commanded no other view, I 
asked the monk beside me why the window was 
not rather made on the side of the cell whence 
it would open to the solemn fields of the Alpine 
valley. " We do not come here," he replied, *' to 
look at the mountains." 

The same answer is given, practically, by the 
men of this century, to every such question; 
only the walls with which they enclose them- 
selves are those of Pride, not of Prayer. 



THE HIGHLANDER. 



The right faith of man is not intended to 
give him repose, but to enable him to do his 
work. 



374 PRECIOUS THOIFGHTS. 

It is not intended that he should look awaj 
from the place he lives in now, and cheer him- 
self with thoughts of the place he is to live in 
next, but that he should look stoutly into this 
world, in faith that if he does his work thor- 
oughly here, some good to others or himself, 
with which however he is not at present con- 
cerned, will come of it hereafter. And this kind 
of brave, but not very hopeful or cheerful 
faith, I perceive to be always rewarded by clear 
practical success and splendid intellectual pow- 
er; while the faith which dwells on the future 
fades away into rosy mist, and emptiness of 
musical air. That result indeed follows nat- 
urally enough on its habit of assuming that 
things must be right, or must come right, when, 
probably, the fact is, that so far as we are con- 
cerned, they are entirely wrong; and going 
wrong: and also on its weak and false way of 
looking on what these religious persons call 
" the bright side of things," that is to say, on 
one side of them only, when God has given 
them two sides, and intended us to see both. 

I was reading but the other day in a book by a 
zealous, useful, and able Scotch clergyman, one 
of these rhapsodies, in which he described a 
scene in the Highlands to show (he said) the 
goodness of God. In this Highland scene there 
was nothing but sunshine, and fresh breezes, 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS, 375 

and bleating lambs, and clean tartans, and all 
manner of pleasantness. Now a Highland 
Bcene is, beyond dispute, pleasant enough in its 
own way; but, looked close at, has its shadows. 
Here, for instance, is the very fact of one, as 
pretty as I can remember — having seen many. 
It is a little valley of soft turf, enclosed in its 
narrow oval by jutting rocks and broad flakes of 
nodding fern. From one side of it to the other 
winds, serpentine, a clear brown stream, droop- 
ing into quicker ripple as it reaches the end of 
the oval field, and then, first islanding a purple 
and white rock with an amber pool, it dashes 
away into a narrow fall of foam under a thicket 
of mountain ash and alder. The autumn sun, 
low but clear, shines on the scarlet ash-berries 
and on the golden birch-leaves, which, fallen 
here and there, when the breeze has not caught 
them, rest quiet in the crannies of the purple 
rock. Beside the rock, in the hollow under the 
thicket, the carcass of an ewe, drowned in the 
last flood, lies nearly bare to the bone, its white 
libs protruding through the skin, raven-torn; 
and the rags of its wool still flickering from the 
branches that first stayed it as the stream swept 
it down. A little lower, the current plunges, 
roaring, into a circular chasm like a well, sur- 
rounded on three sides by a chimney-like hol- 
lowness of polished rock, down which the foam 



37^ PRECIOUS THOUGHTS, 

Blips in detached snow-flakes. Round the edges 
of the pool beneath, the water circles slowly, 
like black oil; a little butterfly lies on its back, its 
wings glued to one of the eddies, its limbs 
feebly quivering; a fish rises and it is gone. 
Lower down the stream, I can just see, over 
a knoll, the green and damp turf roofs of four 
or five hovels, built at the edge of a morass, 
which is trodden by the cattle into a black 
Slough of Despond at their doors, and traversed 
by a few ill-set stepping-stones, with here and 
there a flat slab on the tops, where they have 
sunk out of sight; and at the turn of the brook 
I see a man fishing, with a boy and a dog — a 
picturesque and pretty group enough certainly, 
if they had not been there all day starving. I 
know them, and I know the dog's ribs also, 
which are nearly as bare as the dead ewe's; 
and the child's wasted shoulders, cutting his old 
tartan jacket through, so sharp are they. We 
will go down and talk with the man. 

Or, that I may not piece pure truth with 
fancy, for I have none of his words set down, 
let us hear a word or two from another such, a 
Scotchman also, and as true-hearted, and in just 
as fair a scene. I write out the passage, in 
which I have kept his few sentences, word for 
word, as it stands in my private diary: — " 2 2d 
April (1851). Yesterday I had a long walk up 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. Z77 

the Via Gellia, at Matlock, coming down upon 
it from the hills al)ove, all sown with anemones 
and violets, and murmuring with sweet springs. 
Above all the mills in the valley, the brook, in 
its first purity, forms a small shallow pool, with 
a sandy bottom covered with cresses, and other 
water plants. A man was wading in it for 
cresses as I passed up the valley, and bade me 
good-day. I did not go much farther; he was 
there when I returned. I passed him again, 
about one hundred yards, when it struck me I 
might as well learn all I could about water- 
cresses; so I turned back'. I asked the man, 
among other questions, what he called the 
common weed, something like water-cress, but 
with a serrated leaf, which grows at the edge of 
nearly all such pools. ' We calls that brook- 
lime, hereabouts,' said a voice behind me. I 
turned, and saw three men, miners or manufac- 
turers — two evidently Derbyshire men, and re- 
spectable-looking in their way; the third, thin, 
poor, old, and harder-featured, and utterly in 
rags. * Brooklime? ' I said. ' What do you 
call it lime for? * The man said he did not 
know, it was called that. * You'll find that in 
the British Erba,' said the weak, calm voice of 
the old man. I turned to him in much sur- 
prise; but he went on saying something drily (I 
hardly understood what) to the cress-gatherer; 



37^ PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

who contradicting him, the old man said he 
'didn't know fresh water/ he ' knew enough 
of sa't.' * Have you been a sailor? ' I asked. 
* I was a sailor for eleven years and ten months 
of my life,' he said, in the same strangely quiet 
manner. * And what are you now? ' * I lived 
for ten years after my wife's death by picking 
up rags and bones; I hadn't much occasion 
afore.* 'And now how do you live?' 'Why, 
I lives hard and honest, and haven't got to live 
long,' or something to that effect. He then 
went on, in a kind of maundering way about 
his wife. ' She had rheumatism and fever very 
bad; and her second rib grow'd over her hench- 
bone. A' was a clever woman, but a' grow'd to 
be a very little one' (this with an expression of 
deep melancholy.) (Then, after a pause:) ' She 
died. I never cared much what come of me 
since; but I know that I shall soon reach her; 
that's a knowledge I would na gie for the king's 
crown.* 'You are a Scotchman, are not you? * 
I asked. ' I'm from the Isle of Skye, sir; I'm a 
McGregor.' I said something about his reli- 
gious faith. 'Ye'll know I was bred in the 
Church of Scotland, sir,' he said, ' and I love it as 
I love my own soul; but I think thae Wesleyan 
Methodists ha' got salvation among them, too.' " 
Truly, this Highland and English hill-scenery 
is fair enough; but has its shadows; and deeper 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 379 

colouring, here and there, than that of heath 
and rose. 



TITHES. 

And let us not now lose sight of this broac 
and unabrogated principle — I might sa}v incapa- 
ble of being abrogated, so long as men shall re- 
ceive earthly gifts from God. Of all that they 
have His tithe must be rendered to Him, or in 
so far and in so much He is forgotten: of the 
skill and of the treasure, of the strength and of 
the mind, of the time and of the toil, offering 
must be made reverently; and if there be any 
difference between the Levitical and the Chris- 
tian offering, it is that the latter may be just so 
much the wider in its range as it is less typical 
in its meaning, as it is thankful instead of sacri- 
ficial. There can be no excuse accepted be- 
cause the Deity does not nov/ visibly dwell in His 
temple ;'if He is invisible it is only through our 
failing faith: nor any excuse because other calls 
are more immediate or more sacred; this ought 
to be done, and not the other left undone. 



THE HOUSEHOLD ALTAR. 

When men do not love their hearths, nor rev- 
erence their thresholds, it is a sign that they 



3^0 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS, 

have dishonoured both, and that they have never 
acknowledged the true universality of that 
Christian worship v/hich was indeed to super- 
sede the idolatry, but not the piety, of the pagan. 
Our God is a household God, as well as a heav- 
enly one; He has an altar in every man's dwell- 
ing; let men look to it when they rend it lightly 
and pour out its ashes. It is not a question of 
mere ocular delight, it is no question of intel- 
lectual pride, or of cultivated and critical fancy, 
how, and with what aspect of durability and of 
completeness, the domestic buildings of a nation 
shall be raised. It is one of those moral duties, 
not with more impunity to be neglected because 
the perception of them depends on a finely 
toned and balanced conscientiousness, to build 
our dwellings with care, and patience, and fond- 
ness, and diligent completion, and with a view 
to their duration at least for such a period as, 
in the ordinary course of national revolutions, 
might be supposed likely to extend to the entire 
alteration of the direction of local interests. 
This at the least; but it would be better if, in every 
possible instance, men built their own houses on 
a scale commensurate rather with their condi- 
tion at the commencement, than their attain- 
ments at the termination, of their worldly career; 
and built them to stand as long as human work 
at its strongest can be hoped to stand; record- 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 38 1 

ing to their children what they have been, and 
from what, if so it had been permitted them, 
they had risen. And when houses are thus 
built, we may have that true domestic architect- 
ure, the beginning of all other, which does not 
disdain to treat with respect and thoughtfulness 
the small habitation as well as the large, and 
which invests with the dignity of contented man- 
hood the narrowness of worldly circumstance. 



EMOTIONS EXCITED BY THE IMAGINATION. 

Examine the nature of your own emotion (if 
you feel it) at the sight of the Alp, and you find 
all the brightness of that emotion hanging, like 
dew on gossamer, on a curious web of subtle 
fancy and imperfect knowledge. First, you 
have a vague idea of its size, coupled with won- 
der at the work of the great Builder of its walls 
and foundations; then an apprehension of its 
eternity, a pathetic sense of its perpetualness, 
and your own transientness, as of the grass upon 
its sides; then, and in this very sadness, a sense 
of strange companionship with past generations 
in seeing what they saw. They did not see the 
clouds that are floating over your head; nor the 
cottage wall on the other side of the field; nor 
the road by which you are travelling. But they 



3^2 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS, 

saw tJmt. The wall of granite in the heavens 
was the same to them as to you. They have 
ceased to look upon it; you will soon cease to 
look also, and the granite wall will be for others. 
Then, mingled with these more solemn imagina- 
tions, come t?ie understandings of the gifts and 
glories of the Alps, the fancying forth of all the 
fountains that well from its rocky walls, and 
strong rivers that are born out of its ice, and of 
all the pleasant valleys that wind between its 
cliffs, and all the chalets that gleam among its 
clouds, and happy farmsteads couched upon its 
pastures; while together with the thoughts of 
these rise strange sympathies with all the un- 
known of human life, and happiness, and death, 
signified by that narrow white flame of the ever- 
lasting snow, seen so far in the morning sky. 

These images, and far more than these, lie at 
the root of the emotion which you feel at the 
sight of the Alp. You may not trace them in 
your heart, for there is a great deal more in your 
heart, of evil and good, than you ever can trace; 
but they stir you and quicken you for all that. 
Assuredly, so far as you feel more at beholding 
the snowy mountain than any other object of 
the same sweet silvery grey, these are the kind 
of images which cause you to do so; and, ob- 
serve, these are nothing more than a greater ap- 
prehension of X};\it facts of the thing. We call 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 383 

the power " Imagination," because it imagines 
or conceives; but it is only noble imagination if 
it imagines or conceives the truth. 



LIFE NEVER A JEST. 

The playful fancy of a moment may inno- 
cently be expressed by the passing word; but he 
can hardly have learned the preciousness of life, 
who passes days in the elaboration of a jest. 
And, as to what regards the delineation of human 
character, the nature of all noble art is to epito- 
mize and embrace so much at once, that its sub- 
ject can never be altogether ludicrous; it must 
possess all the solemnities of the whole, not the 
brightness of the partial, truth. For all truth 
that makes us smile. is partial. The novelist 
amuses us by his relation of a particular inci- 
dent; but the painter cannot set any one of his 
characters before us without giving some glimpse 
of its whole career. That of which the histo- 
rian informs us in successive pages, it is the task 
of the painter to inform us of at once, writing 
upon the countenance not merely the expression 
of the moment, but the history of the life: and 
the history of a b'fe can never be a jest. 



384 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 



UTILITARIANISM. 

The reader will probably remember the son- 
nets of Wordsworth which were published at the 
time when the bill for the railroad between Ken- 
dal and Bowness was laid before Parliament. 
His remonstrance was of course in vain; and I 
have since heard that there are proposals enter- 
tained for continuing this line to Whitehaven 
through Borrowdale. I transcribe the note pre- 
fixed by W^ordsworth to the first sonnet. 

" The degree and kind of attachment which 
many of the yeomanry feel to their small inheri- 
tances can scarcely be over-rated. Near the 
house of one of them stands a magnificent tree, 
which a neighbor of the owner advised him to 
fell for profit's sake. ' Fell it! ' exclaimed the 
yeoman; 'I had rather fall on my knees and 
worship it.' It happens, I believe, that the in- 
tended railway would pass through this little 
property, and I hope that an apology for the an- 
swer will not be thought necessary by one who 
enters into the strength of the feeling." 

The men who thus feel will always be few, 
and overborne by the thoughtless, avaricious 
crowd; but is it right, because they are a min- 
ority, that there should be no respect for them, 
no concession to them, that their voice should 
be utterlv without regard in the council of the 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 385 

nation, and that any attempt to defend one sin- 
gle district from the offence and foulness of mer- 
cenary uses, on the ground of its beauty and 
power over men's hearts, should be met, as I 
doubt not it would be, by total and impenetra- 
ble scorn? 



THE PRE-EMINENCE OF THE SOUL. 

I do not mean to speak of the body and soul 
as separable. The man is made up of both: 
they are to be raised and glorified together, and 
all art is an expression of the one, by and 
through the other. All that I would insist upon 
is, the necessity of the whole man being in his 
work; the body must be in it. Hands and hab- 
its must be in it, whether we will or not; but the 
nobler part of the man may often not be in it. 
And that nobler part acts principally in love, rev- 
erence, and admiration, together with those con- 
ditions of thought which arise out of them. For 
we usually fall into much error by considering 
the intellectual powers as having dignity in them- 
selves, and separable from the heart; whereas 
the truth is, that the intellect becomes noble 
and ignoble according to the food we give it, 
and the kind of subjects with which it is con- 
versant. It is not the reasoning power which, 



386 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS, 

of itself, is noble, but the reasoning power occu- 
pied with its proper objects. Half of the mis- 
takes of metaphysicians have arisen from their 
not observing this; namely, that the intellect, 
going through the same processes, is yet mean 
or noble according to the matter it deals with, 
and wastes itself away in mere rotatory motion, 
if it be set to grind straws and dust. If we rea- 
son only respecting words, or lines, or any 
trifling and finite things, the reason becomes a 
contemptible faculty; but reason employed on 
holy and infinite things, becomes herself holy 
and infinite. So that, by work of the soul, I 
mean the reader always to understand the work 
of the entire immortal creature, proceeding from 
a quick, perceptive, and eager heart, perfected 
by the intellect, and finally dealt with by the 
hands, under the direct guidance of these higher 
powers. 

And now observe, the first important conse- 
quence of our fully understanding this pre-emi- 
nence of the soul, will be the due understanding 
of that subordination of knowledge respecting 
which so much has already been said. For it 
must be felt at once, that the increase of knowl- 
edge, merely as such, does not make the soul 
larger or smaller; that, in the sight of God, all 
the knowledge man can gain is as nothing: but 
that the soul, for which the great scheme of re- 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS, 387 

demption was laid, be it ignorant or be it wise, 
is all in all; and in the activity, strength, health, 
and well-being of this soul, lies the main differ- 
ence, in His sight, between one man and an- 
other. And that wiiich is ali in all in God's 
estimate is also, be assured, all in all in man's la- 
bour; and to have the heart open, and the eyes 
clear, and the emotions and thoughts warm and 
quick, and not the knowing of this or the other 
fact, is the state needed for all mighty doing in 
this world. And therefore finally, for this, the 
weightiest of all reasons, let us take no pride in 
our knowledge. We may, in a certain sense, be 
proud of being immortal; we may be proud of 
being God's children; we may be proud of lov- 
ing, thinking, seeing, and of all that we are by 
no human teaching: but not of what we have 
been taught by rote; not of the ballast and 
freight of the ship of the spirit, but only of its 
pilotage, without which all the freight will only 
sink it faster, and strew the sea more richly with 
its ruin. There is not at this moment a youth 
of twenty, having received what we moderns 
ridiculously call education, but he knows more 
of everything except the soul, than Plato or St. 
Paul did; but he is not for that reason a greater 
man, or fitter for his work, or more fit to be 
heard by others, than Plato or St. Paul. 



388 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 



THIS WORLD A HOSTELRY. 

All that in this world enlarges the sphere of 
affection or imagination is to be reverenced, 
and all those circumstances enlarge it which 
strengthen our memory or quicken our concep- 
tion of the dead; hence it is no light sin to de- 
stroy anything that is old, more especially be- 
cause, even with the aid of ail obtainable rec- 
ords of the past, we, the living, occupy a space 
of too large importance and interest in our own 
eyes; we look upon the world too much as our 
own, too much as if we had possessed it and 
should possess it for ever, and forget that it is a 
mere hostelry, of which we occupy the apart- 
ments for a time, which others better than we 
have sojourned in before, who are now where we 
should desire to be with them. 



CLOUDS AS GOD S DWELLING-PLACE. 

If we try the interpretation in the theological 
sense of the word Heaven^ and examine whether 
the clouds are spoken of as God's dwelling- 
place, we find God going before the Israelites in 
a pillar of cloud; revealing Himself in a cloud 
on Sinai; appearing in a cloud on the mercy- 
seat, filling the Temple of Solomon with the 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 389 

cloud when its dedication is accepted; appearing 
in a great cloud to Ezekiel; ascending into a 
cloud before the eyes of the disciples on Mount 
Olivet; and in like manner returning to Judg- 
ment. " Behold, He cometh with clouds, and 
every eye shall see Him." "Then shall they see 
the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven, 
with power and great glory." 



THE NOBLE ENDS OF KNOWLEDGE. 

Men are merely on a lower or higher stage of 
an eminence, whose summit is God's throne, in- 
finitely above all; and there is just as much rea- 
son for the wisest as for the simplest man being 
discontented with his position, as respects the 
real quantity of knowledge he possesses. And, 
for both of them, the only true reasons for con- 
tentment with the sum of knowledge they pos- 
sess are these: that it is the kind of knowledge 
they need for their duty and happiness in life; 
that all they have is tested and certain, so far as 
it is in their power; that all they have is well in 
order, and within reach when they need it; that 
it has not cost too much time in the getting; 
that none of it, once got, has been lost; and 
that there is not too much to be easily taken 
care of. 



390 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS, 

Consider these requirements a little, and the 
evils that result in our education and polity 
from neglecting them. Knowledge is mental 
food, and is exactly to the spirit what food is to 
the body (except that the spirit needs several 
sorts of food, of which knowledge is only one), 
and it is liable to the same kind of misuses. It 
may be mixed and disguised by art, till it be- 
comes unwholesome; it may be refined, sweet- 
ened, and made palatable, until it has lost all its 
power of nourishment; and, even of its best kind, 
it may be eaten to surfeiting, and minister to dis- 
ease and death. 

Therefore, with respect to knowledge, we are 
to reason and act exactly as with respect to food. 
We no more live to know, than we live to eat. 
We live to contemplate, enjoy, act, adore ; and 
we may know all that is to be known in this 
world, and what Satan knows in the other, with- 
out being able to do any of these. We are to 
ask, therefore, first, is the knowledge we would 
have fit food for us, good and simple, not artifi- 
cial and decorated ? and secondly, how much of 
it will enable us best for our work ; and will 
leave our hearts light, and our eyes clear ? For 
no more than that is to be eaten without the old 
Eve-sin. 

Observe, also, the difference between tasting 
knowledge, and hoarding it. In this respect it 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 39 1 

is also like food ; since, in some measure, the 
knowledge of all men is laid up in granaries, for 
future use; much of it is at any given moment 
dormant, not fed upon or enjoyed, but in store. 
And by all it is to ^be remembered, that knowl- 
edge in this form may be kept without air till it 
rots, or in such unthreshed disorder that it is of 
no use ; and that, however good or orderly, it is 
still only in being tasted that it becomes of use; 
and that men may easily starve in their own 
granaries, men of science, perhaps, most of all, 
for they are likely to seek accumulation of their 
store, rather than nourishment from it. Yet let 
it not be thought that I would undervalue them. 
The good and great among them are like Joseph, 
to whom all nations sought to buy corn ; or like 
the sower going forth to sow beside all waters, 
sending forth thither the feet of the ox and the 
ass: only let us remember that this is not all 
men's work. We are not intended to be all 
keepers of granaries, nor all to be measured by 
the filling of a storehouse; but many, nay, most 
of us, are to receive day by day our daily bread, 
and shall be as well nourished and as fit for our 
labour, and often, also, fit for nobler and more 
divine labour, in feeding from the barrel of meal 
that does not waste, and from the cruse of oil 
that does not fail, than if our barns were filled 



39^ PRECIOUS Tiro UGH TS. 

with plenty, and our presses bursting out with 
new wine. 

It is for each man to find his own measure in 
this matter ; in great part, also, 'for others to 
find it for him, while he is yet a youth. And the 
desperate evil of the whole Renaissance system 
is, that all idea of measure is therein forgotten, 
that knowledge is thought the one and the only 
good, and it is never inquired whether men are 
vivified by it or paralyzed. Let us leave figures. 
The reader may not believe the analogy to have 
been pressing so far; but let him consider the 
subject himself, let him examine the effect of 
knowledge in his own heart, and see whether 
the trees of knowledge and of life are one now, 
any more than in Paradise. He must feel that 
the real animating power of knowledge is only 
in the moment of its being first received, when 
it fills us with wonder and joy ; a joy for which, 
observe, the previous ignorance is just as neces- 
sary as the present knowledge. That man is al- 
ways happy who is in the presence of something 
which he cannot know to the full, which he is 
always going on to know. This is the necessary 
condition of a finite creature with divinely rooted 
and divinely directed intelligence ; this, there- 
fore, its happy state, — but observe, a state, not of 
triumph or joy in what it knows, but of joy rather 
in the continual discovery of new ignorance, con- 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 393 

tinual self-abasement, continual astonishment. 
Once thoroughly our own, the knowledge ceases 
to give us pleasure. It may be practically useful 
to us, it may be good for others, or good for 
usury to obtain more ; but, in itself, once let it 
be thoroughly familiar, and it is dead. The 
wonder is gone from it, and all the fine colour 
which it had when first we drew it up out of the 
infinite sea. And what does it matter how much 
or how little of it we have laid aside, when our 
only enjoyment is still in the casting of that 
deep sea line ? What does it matter ? Nay, in 
one respect, it matters much, and not to our 
advantage. For one effect of knowledge is to 
deaden the force of the imagination and the 
original energy of the whole man: under the 
weight of his knowledge he cannot move so 
lightly as in the days of his simplicity. The 
pack-horse is furnished for the journey, the war- 
horse is armed for war; but the freedom of the 
field and the lightness of the limb are lost for 
both. Knowledge is, at best, the pilgrim's bur- 
den or the soldier's panoply, often a weariness 
to them both: and the Renaissance knowledge is 
like the Renaissance armour of plate, binding and 
cramping the human form; while all good knowl- 
edge is like the crusader's chain mail, which 
throws itself into folds with the body, yet it is 
rarely so forged as that the clasps and rivets do 



394 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

not gall us. All men feel this, though they do 
not think of it, nor reason out its consequences. 
They look back to the days of childhood as of 
greatest happiness, because those were the days 
of greatest wonder, greatest simplicity, and most 
vigorous imagination. And the whole difference 
between a man of genius and other men, it has 
been said a thousand times, and most - truly, is 
that the first remains in great part a child, seeing 
with the large eyes of children, in perpetual won- 
der, not conscious of much knowledge, — con- 
scious, rather, of infinite ignorance, and yet infin- 
ite power; a fountain of eternal admiration, de- 
light, and creative force within him meeting the 
ocean of visible and governable things around 
him. 

That is what we have to make men, so far as 
we may. All are to be men of genius in their 
degree, — rivulets or rivers, it does not matter, so 
that the souls be clear and pure; not dead walls 
encompassing dead heaps of things known and 
numbered, but running waters in the sweet wil- 
derness of things unnumbered and unknown, con- 
scious only of the living banks, on which they 
partly refresh and partly reflect the flowers, and 
so pass on. 

Let each man answer for himself how far his 
knowledge has made him this, or how far it is 
loaded upon him as the pyramid is upon the 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 395 

tomb. Let him consider, also, how much of it 
has cost him labour and time that might have 
been spent in healthy, happy action, beneficial 
to all mankind; how many living souls may have 
been left uncomforted and unhelped by him, 
while his own eyes were failing by the midnight 
lamp; how many warm sympathies have died 
within him as he measured lines or counted let- 
ters; how many draughts of ocean air, and steps 
on mountain-turf, and openings of the highest 
heaven he has lost for his knowledge; how much 
of that knowledge, so dearly bought, is now for- 
gotten or despised, leaving only the capacity of 
wonder less within him, and, as it happens in a 
thousand instances, perhaps even also the capac- 
ity of devotion. And let him, — if, after thus 
dealing with his own heart, he can say that his 
knowledge has indeed been fruitful to him, — yet 
consider how many there are who have been 
forced by the inevitable laws of modern educa- 
tion into toil utterly repugnant to their natures, 
and that in the extreme, until the whole strength 
of the young soul was sapped away; and then 
pronounce with fearfulness how far, and in how 
m^ny senses, it may indeed be true that the wis- 
dom of this world is foolishness with God. 

Now all this possibility of evil, observe, 
attaches to knowledge pursued for the noblest 
ends, if it be pursued imprudently. I have as- 



39^ PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

sumed, in speaking of its effect both on men gen- 
erally and on the artist especially, that it was 
sought in the true love of it, and with all honesty 
and directness of purpose. But this is granting 
far too much in its favour. Of knowledge in 
general, and without qualification, it is said by 
the Apostle that " it puffeth up;" and the father 
of all modern science, writing directly in its 
praise, yet asserts this danger even in more abso- 
lute terms, calling it a " venomousness" in the 
very nature of knowledge itself. 

There is, indeed, much difference in this re- 
spect between the tendencies of different 
branches of knowledge; it being a sure rule that 
exactly in proportion as they are inferior, nuga- 
tory, or limited in scope, their power of feeding 
pride is greater. Thus philology, logic, rhetoric, 
and the other sciences of the schools, being for 
the most part ridiculous and trifling, have so 
pestilent an effect upon those who are devoted 
to them, that their students cannot conceive of 
any higher sciences than these, but fancy that 
all education ends in the knowledge of words: 
but the true and great sciences, more especially 
natural history, make men gentle and modest in 
proportion to the largeness of their apprehension 
and just perception of the infiniteness of the 
things they can never know. And this, it seems 
to me, is the principal lesson we are intended to 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 39/ 

be taught by the book of Job; for there God 
has thrown open to us the heart of a man most 
just and holy, and apparently perfect in all 
things possible to human nature except humility. 
For this he is tried: and we are shown that no 
suffering, no self-examination, however honest, 
however stern, no searching out of the heart by 
its own bitterness, is enough to convince man of 
his nothingness before God; but that the sight 
of God's creation will do it. For, when the 
Deity himself has willed to end the temptation, 
and to accomplish in Job that for which it was 
sent, He does not vouchsafe to reason with him, 
still less does He overwhelm him with terror, or 
confound him by laying open before his eyes the 
book of his iniquities. He opens before him 
only the arch of the dayspring, and the fountains 
of the deep; and amidst the covert of the reeds, 
and on the heaving waves, Fie bids him watch 
the kings of the children of pride, — " Behold now 
Behemoth, which I made with thee:" And the 
work is done. 

Thus, if, I repeat, there is any one lesson in 
the whole book which stands forth more defi- 
nitely than another, it is this of the holy and hum- 
bling influence of natural science, on the human 
lieart. And yet, even here, it is not the science 
but the perception, to which the good is owing; and 
the natural sciences may become as harmful as any 



398 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

others, when they lose themselves in classification 
and catalogue-making. Still, the principal danger 
is with the sciences of words and methods; and 
it was exactly into those sciences that the whole 
energy of men during the Renaissance period was 
thrown. They discovered suddenly that the 
world for ten centuries had been living in an un- 
grammatical manner, and they made it forthwith 
the end of human existence to be grammatical. 
And it mattered thenceforth nothing what was 
said or what was done, so only that it was said 
with scholarship, and done with system. False- 
hood in a Ciceronian dialect had no opposers; 
truth in patois no listeners. A Roman phrase 
was thought worth any number of Gothic facts. 
The sciences ceased at once to be anything more 
than different kinds of grammars, — grammar of 
language, grammar of logic, grammar of ethics, 
grammar of art; and the tongue, wit, and inven- 
tion of the human race were supposed to have 
found their utmost and most divine mission in 
syntax and syllogism, perspective and five orders. 
Of such knowledge as this, nothing but pride 
could come; and, therefore, I have called the 
first mental characteristic of the Renaissance 
schools, the "pride" of science. If they had 
reached any science worth the name, they might 
have loved it; but of the paltry knowledge 
they possessed, they could only be proud. There 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 399 

was not anything in it capable of being loved. 
Anatomy, indeed, then first made the subject 
of accurate study, is a true science, but not 
so attractive as to enlist the affections strongly 
on its side: and therefore, like its meaner sisters, 
it became merely a ground for pride; and the one 
main purpose of the Renaissance artists, in all 
their work, was to show how much they knew. 

There were, of course, noble exceptions; but 
chiefly belonging to the earliest periods of the 
Renaissance, when its teaching had not yet pro- 
duced its full effect. Raphael, Leonardo, and 
Michael Angelo were all trained in the old school; 
they all had masters who knew the true ends of 
art, and had reached them; masters nearly as 
great as they were themselves, but imbued with 
the old religious and earnest spirit, which their 
disciples receiving from them, and drinking at 
the same time deeply from all the fountains of 
knowledge opened in their day, became the 
world's wonders. Then the dull wondering world 
believed that their greatness rose out of their new 
knowledge, instead of out of that ancient religious 
root, in which to abide was life, from which to 
be severed was annihilation. And from that day 
to this, they have tried to produce Michael 
Angelos and Leonardos by teaching the barren 
sciences, and still have mourned and marvelled 
that no more Michael Angelos came; not per- 



400 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

ceiving that those great Fathers were only able 
to receive such nourishment because they were 
rooted on the rock of all ages, and that our scien- 
tific teaching, nowadays, is nothing more nor less 
than the assiduous watering of trees whose stems 
are cut through. Nay, I have even granted too 
much in saying that those great men were able 
to receive pure nourishment from the sciences; 
for my own conviction is, and I know it to be 
shared by most of those who love Raphael truly, 
— that he painted best when he knew least. 
Michael Angelo was betrayed again and again, 
into such vain and offensive exhibition of his 
anatomical knowledge as, to this day, renders his 
higher powers indiscernible by the greater part of 
men; and Leonardo fretted his life away in 
engineering, so that there is hardly a picture left 
to bear his name. But, with respect to all who 
followed, there can be no question that the 
science they possessed was utterly harmful; 
serving merely to draw away their hearts at once 
from the purposes of art and the power of nature, 
and to make, out of the canvas and marble, 
nothing more than materials for the exhibition 
of petty dexterity and useless knowledge. 

It is sometimes amusing to watch the naive 
and childish way in which this vanity is shown. 
For instance, when perspective was first invented, 
the world thought it a mighty discovery, and the 



PRECIOUS THOU GUTS. 401 

greatest men it had in it were as proud of know- 
ing that retiring lines converge, as if all the wis- 
dom of Solomon had been compressed into a 
vanishing point. And, accordingly, it became 
nearly impossible for any one to paint a Nativity, 
but he must turn the stable and manger into a 
Corinthian arcade, in order to show his knowl- 
edge of perspective; and half the best architect- 
ure of the time, instead of being adorned v/ith 
historical sculpture, as of old, was set forth with 
bas-relief of minor corridors and galleries, thrown 
into perspective. 

Now that perspective can be taught to any 
schoolboy in a week, we can smile at this vanity. 
But the fact is, that all pride in knowledge is 
precisely as ridiculous, whatever its kind, or 
whatever its degree. There is, indeed, nothing 
of which man has any right to be proud; but 
the very last thing of which, with any show of 
reason, he can make his boast is his knowledge, 
except only that infinitely small portion of it 
which he has discovered for himself. For what 
is there to be more proud of in receiving a piece 
of knowledge from another person than in receiv- 
ing a piece of money? Beggars should not be 
proud whatever kind of alms they receive. 
Knowledge is like current coin. A man may have 
iiome right to be proud of possessing it, if he has 
worked for the gold of it and assayed it, and 



402 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS, 

stamped it, so that it may be received of all men 
as true; or earned it fairly, being already assayed: 
but if he has done none of these things, but only 
had it thrown in his face by a passer-by, what 
cause has he to be proud? And though, in this 
mendicant fashion, he had heaped together the 
wealth of Croesus, would pride any more, for 
this, become him, as, in some sort, it becomes 
the man who has laboured for his fortune, how- 
ever small? So, if a man tells me the sun 
is larger than the earth, have I any cause for 
pride in knowing it? or, if any multitude of men 
tell me any number of things, heaping all their 
wealth of knowledge upon me, have I any reason 
to be proud under the heap? And is not nearly 
all the knowledge of which we boast in these 
days cast upon us in this dishonourable way; 
worked for by other men, proved by them, and 
then forced upon us, even against our wills, and 
beaten into us in our youth, before we have 
the wit even to know if it be good or not? 
(Mark the distinction between knowledge and 
thought.) Truly a noble possession to be proud 
of! Be assured, there is no part of the furniture 
of a man's mind which he has a right to exult 
in, but that which he has hewn and fashioned 
for himself. He who has built himself a hut oii 
a desert heath, and carved his bed, and table, ana 
chair out of the nearest forest, may have some 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 4O3 

right to take pride in the appliances of his nar- 
row chamber, as assuredly he will have joy 
in them. But the man who has had a palace 
built, and adorned, and furnished for him, may, 
indeed, have many advantages above the other, 
but he has no reason to be proud of his uphol- 
sterer's skill; and it is ten to one if he has half 
the joy in his couches of ivory that the other will 
have in his pallet of pine. 

And observe how we feel this, in the kind of 
respect we pay to such knowledge as we are 
indeed capable of estimating the value of. When 
it is our own, and new to us, we cannot judge of 
it; but let it be another's also, and long familiar 
to us, and see what value we set on it. Consider 
how we regard a schoolboy, fresh from his term's 
labour. If he begin to display his newly ac- 
([uired small knowledge to us, and plume himself 
thereupon, how soon do we silence him with 
contempt! But it is not so if the schoolboy 
begins to feel or see anything. In the strivings 
of his soul within him he is our equal; in his 
power of sight and thought he stands separate 
from us, and may be a greater than we. We are 
ready to hear him forthwith. " You saw that? 
you felt that? No matter for your being a child; 
let us hear." 

Consider that ever}^ generation of men stands 
in this relation to its successors. It is as 



4^4 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

the schoolboy: the knowledge of which it is 
proudest will be as the alphabet to those who 
follow. It had better make no noise about its 
knowledge; a time will come when its utmost, in 
that kind, will be food for scorn. Poor fools! 
was that all they knew? and behold how proud 
they were! But what we see and feel will never 
be mocked at. All men will be thankful to us 
for telling them that. "Indeed!" they will say, 
" they felt that in their day? saw that? Would 
God we may be like them, before we go to the 
home where sight and thought are not!" 



WHAT USE? 



Of what use was that dearly bought water of 
the well of Bethlehem with which the King of 
Israel slaked the dust of Adullum? yet was not 
thus better than if he had drunk it? Of what 
use was that passionate act of Christian sacrifice, 
against which, first uttered by the false tongue, 
the very objection we would now conquer took 
a sullen tone for ever? So also let us not ask of 
what use our offering is to the church: it is at 
least better for ns than if it had been retained 
for ourselves. It may be better for others also: 
there is, at any rate, a chance of this; though we 
must always fearfully and widely shun the 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 405 

thought that the magnificence of the temple can 
materially add to the efficiency of the worship or 
to the power of the ministry. Whatever we do, 
or whatever we offer, let it not interfere with the 
simplicity of the one or abate, as if replacing, the 
zeal of the other. 



PAGAN DOUBTS. 

The Greeks never shrink from horror; down 
to its uttermost depth, to its most appalling 
physical detail, they strive to sound the secrets 
of sorrow. For them there is no passing by on 
the other side, no turning away the eyes to 
vanity from pain. Literally, they have not 
"lifted up their souls unto vanity." Whether 
there be consolation for them or not, neither 
apathy nor blindness shall be their saviours; if, 
for them, thus knowing the facts of the grief of 
earth, any hope, relief, or triumph may hereafter 
seem possible, — well; but if not, still hopeless, 
reliefless, eternal, the sorrow shall be met face to 
face. This Hector, so righteous, so merciful, so 
brave, has, nevertheless, to look upon his dearest 
brother in miserablest death. His own soul 
passes away in hopeless sobs through the throat- 
wound of the Grecian spear. That is one aspect 
of things in this world, a fair world truly, but 



4g6 precious thoughts. 

having among its other aspects, this one, highly 
ambiguous. 

Meeting it boldly as they may, gazing right into 
the skeleton face of it, the ambiguity remains', 
nay, in some sort gains upon them. We trusted 
in the gods; — we thought that wisdom and 
courage would save us. Our wisdom and cour- 
age themselves deceive us to our death. Athena 
had the aspect of Deiphobus — terror of the 
enemy. She has not terrified him, but left us, in 
our mortal need. 

And, beyond that mortality, what hope have 
we? Nothing is clear to us on that horizon, nor 
comforting. Funeral honours; perhaps also rest; 
perhaps a shadowy life — artless, joyless, loveless. 
No devices in that darkness of the grave, nor 
daring, nor delight. Neither marrying nor giving 
in marriage, nor casting of spears, nor rolling of 
chariots, nor voice of fame. Lapped in pale 
Elysian mist, chilling the forgetful heart and 
feeble frame, shall we waste on forever? Can 
the dust of earth claim more of immortality than 
this? Or shall we have even so much as rest? 
May we, indeed, lie down again in the dust, or 
have our sins not hidden from us even the things 
that belong to that peace? May not chance and 
the whirl of passion govern us there; when there 
shall be no thought, nor work, nor wisdom, nor 
breathing of the soul? 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. A^l 



PROPHETIC DREAMS. 

Now, so far as the truth is seen by the imagi- 
nation in its wholeness and quietness, the vision 
is sublime; but so far as it is narrowed and 
broken by the inconsistencies of the human ca- 
pacity, it becomes grotesque: and it would seem 
to be rare that any very exalted truth should be 
impressed on the imagination without some gro- 
tesqueness in its aspect, proportioned to the de- 
gree oi diminution of breadth in the grasp which is 
given of it. Nearly all the dreams recorded in 
the Bible, — Jacob's, Joseph's, Pharaoh's, Nebu- 
chadnezzar's, — are grotesques; and nearly the 
whole of the accessary scenery in the books of 
Ezekiel and the Apocalypse. Thus Jacob's 
dream revealed to him the ministry of angels; 
but because this ministry could not be seen or 
understood by him in its fulness, it was narrowed 
to him into a ladder between heaven and earth, 
which was a grotesque. Joseph's two dreams 
v/ere evidently intended to be signs of the stead- 
fastness of the Divine purpose towards him, by 
possessing the clearness of special prophecy; yet 
were couched in such imagery, as not to inform 
him prematurely of his destiny, and only to be 
understood after their fulfilment. The sun, and 
moon, and stars were at the period, and are in- 
deed throughout the Bible, the symbols of high 



408 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

authority. It was not revealed to Joseph that 
he should be lord over all Egypt; but the repre- 
sentation of his family by symbols of the most 
magnificent dominion, and yet as subject to him, 
must have been afterwards felt by him as a dis- 
tinctly prophetic indication of his own supreme 
power. It was not revealed to him that the oc- 
casion of his brethren's special humiliation before 
him should be their coming to buy corn; but 
when the event took place, must he not have felt 
that there was prophetic purpose in the form of 
the sheaves of wheat which first imaged forth 
their subjection to him? And these two images 
of the sun doing obeisance, and the sheaves bow- 
ing down, — narrowed and imperfect intimations 
of great truth which yet couid not be otherv/ise 
conveyed, — are both grotesques. The kine of 
Pharaoh eating each other, the gold and clay of 
Nebuchadnezzar's image, the four beasts full of 
eyes, and other imagery of Ezekiel and the 
Apocalypse, are grotesques of the same kind, on 
which I need not further insist. 



CHRISTIAN SYMBOLISM. 



As the heathen, in their alienation from God, 
changed His glory into an image made like unto 
corruptible man, and to birds, and four-footed 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 4O9 

beasts, the Christian, in his approach to God, is 
to undo this work, and to change the corrupti- 
ble things into the image of His glory; believing 
that there is nothing so base in creation, but that 
our faith may give it wings which shall raise us 
into companionship with heaven; and that, on 
the other hand, there is nothing so great or so 
goodly in creation, but that it is a mean symbol 
of the Gospel of Christ, and of the things R- 
has prepared for them that love Him. 



THANKFULNESS. 

No man can indeed be a lover of what is best 
in the higher walks of art, who has not feeling 
and charity enough to rejoice with the rude 
sportiveness of hearts that have escaped out of 
prison, and to be thankful for the flowers which 
men have laid their burdens down to sow by the 
wayside. 



" STAND FAST, CRAIG ELLACHIE." 

All the highest points of the Scottish charac- 
ter are connected with impressions derived 
straight from the natural scenery of their country. 
No nation has ever before shown, in the general 



4IO PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

tone of its language — in the general current of 
its literature — so constant a habit of hallowing 
its passions and confirming its principles by di- 
rect association with the charm, or power, of na- 
ture. The writings of Scott and Burns — and 
yet more, of the far greater poets than Burns 
who gave Scotland her traditional ballads, — fur- 
nish you in every stanza — almost in every line — 
with examples of this association of natural 
scenery with the passions; but an instance of its 
farther connexion with moral principle struck 
me forcibly just at the time when I was most la- 
menting the absence of art among the people. 
In one of the loneliest districts of Scotland, where 
the peat cottages are darkest, just at the western 
foot of that great mass of the Grampians which 
encircles the sources of the Spey and Dee, the 
main road which traverses the chain winds 
round the foot of a broken rock called Crag, or 
Craig Ellachie. There is nothing remarkable 
m either its height or form; it is darkened with 
a few scattered pines, and touched along its sum- 
mit with a flush of heather; but it constitutes a 
kind of headland, or leading promontory, in the 
group of hills to which it belongs — a sort of in- 
itial letter of the mountains; and thus stands m 
the mind of the inhabitants of the district, the 
Clan Grant for a type of their country, and of 
the influence of that country upon themselves. 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 4^1 

Their sense of this is beautifully indicated in 
the war-cry of the clan, " Stand fast, Craig El- 
lachie." You may think long over those few 
words without exhausting the deep wells of feel- 
ing and thought contained in them — the love of 
the native land, the assurance of their faithful- 
ness to it; the subdued and gentle assertion of 
indomitable courage — I may need to be told to 
stand, but, if I do, Craig Ellachie does. You 
could not but have felt, had you passed beneath 
it at the time when so many of England's dear- 
est children were being defended by the strength 
of heart of men born at its foot, how often 
among the delicate Indian palaces, whose mar- 
ble was pallid with horror, and whose vermillion 
was darkened with blood, the remembrance of 
rough grey rocks and purple heaths must have 
risen before the sight of the Highland soldier; 
how often the hailing of the shot and the shriek 
of battle would pass away from his hearing, and 
leave only the whisper of the old pine branches, 
" Stand fast, Craig Ellachie!"* 



CARE FOR TRIFLES. 

In mortals, there is a care for trifles which 
proceeds from love and conscience, and is most 

* Is not this the " war-cry" of our own Grant?— 
L. C. T. 



412 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

holy; and a care for trifles which comes of idle- 
ness and frivolity, and is most base. And so, 
also, there is a gravity proceeding from thought, 
which is most noble; and a gravity proceeding 
from dulness and mere incapability of enjoy- 
ment, which is most base. 



DURER AND SALVATOR. 

The reader might see at a glance the elements 
of the Nuremberg country, as they still exist. 
Wooden cottages, thickly grouped, enormously 
high in the roofs; the sharp church spire, small 
and slightly grotesque, surmounting them; be- 
yond, a richly cultivated, healthy plain bounded 
by woody hills. By a strange coincidence the 
very plant which constitutes the staple produce 
of those fields, is in almost ludicrous harmony 
with the grotesqueness and neatness of the ar- 
chitecture around; and one may almost fancy that 
the builders of the little knotted spires and tur- 
rets of the town, and workers of its dark iron 
flowers, are in spiritual presence, watching and 
guiding the produce of the field, — when one finds 
the footpaths bordered everywhere, by the bossy 
spires and lustrous jetty flowers of the black 
hollyhock. 

Lastly, when Durer penetrated among those 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 413 

hills of Franconia he would find himself in a 
pastoral country, much resembling the Gruyere 
districts of Switzerland, but less thickly inhab- 
ited, and giving in its steep, though net lofty, 
rocks, — its scattered pines, — and its fortresses 
and chapels, the motives of all the wilder land- 
scape introduced by the painter in such pieces as 
his St. Jerome, or St. Hubert. His continual 
and forced introduction of sea in almost every 
scene, much as it seems to me to be regretted, 
is possibly owing to his happy recollections of 
the sea-city where he received the rarest of all 
rewards granted to a good workman; and for 
once in his life was understood. 

Among this pastoral simplicity and formal 
sweetness of domestic peace, Durer had to work 
out his question concerning the grave. It 
haunted him long; he learned to engrave death's 
heads well before he had done w^ith it; looked 
deeper than any other man into those strange 
rings, their jewels lost; and gave answer at last 
conclusively in his great Knight and Death — of 
which more presently. But while the Nurem- 
berg landscape is still fresh in our minds, we had 
better turn south quickly and compare the ele- 
ments of education which formed, and of crea- 
tion which companioned, Salvator. 

Born with a wild and coarse nature (how 
coarse I will show you soon), but nevertheless 



414 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

an honest one, he set himself in youth hotly to 
the war, and cast himself carelessly on the cur- 
rent, of life. No rectitude of ledger-lines stood 
in his way; no tender precision of household 
customs; no calm successions of rural labour. 
But past his half-starved lips rolled profusion of 
pitiless wealth; before him glared and swept the 
troops of shameless pleasure. Above him mut- 
tered Vesuvius; beneath his feet shook the Sol- 
fatara. 

In heart disdainful, in temper adventurous; 
conscious of power, impatient of labour, and yet 
more of the pride of the patrons of his youth, he 
fled to the Calabrian hills, seeking not knowledge, 
but freedom. If he was to be surrounded by 
cruelty and deceit, let them at least be those of 
brave men or savage beasts, not of the timorous 
and the contemptible. Better the wrath of the 
robber, than the enmity of the priest; and the 
cunning of the wolf than of the hypocrite. 

We are accustomed to hear the south of Italy 
spoken of as a beautiful country. Its mountain 
forms are graceful above others, its sea bays ex- 
quisite in outline and hue; but it is only beau- 
tiful in superficial aspect. In closer detail it is 
wild and melancholy. Its forests are sombre- 
leafed, labyrinth-stemmed; the carubbe, the 
olive, laurel, and ilex, are alike in that strange 
feverish twisting of their branches, as if in spasms 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 4^5 

of half human pain: — Avernus forests: one fears 
to break their boughs, lest they should cry to us 
from their rents; the rocks they shade are of 
ashes, or thrice-molten lava; iron sponge, whose 
every pore has been filled with fire. Silent vil- 
lages, earthquake-shaken, without commerce, 
without industry, without knowledge, without 
hope, gleam in white ruin from hillside to hill- 
side; far-winding wrecks of immemorial walls 
surround the dust of cities long forsaken: the 
mountain streams moan through the cold arches 
of their foundations, green with weed, and rage 
over the heaps of their fallen towers. Far above 
in thunder-blue serration, stand the eternal 
edges of the angry Apennine, dark with rolling 
impendence of volcanic cloud. 

Yet even among such scenes as these, Salva- 
tor might have been calmed and exalted, had he 
been, indeed, capable of exaltation. But he was 
not of high temper enough to perceive beauty. 
He had not the sacred sense — the sense of col- 
our; all the loveliest hues of the Calabrian air 
were invisible to him; the sorrowful desolation 
of the Calabrian villages unfelt. He saw only 
what was gross and terrible, — the jagged peak, 
the splintered tree, the flowerless bank of gra«s, 
and wandering weed, prickly and pale. His 
temper confirmed itself in evil, and became more 
and more fierce and morose; though not, I be 



4l6 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

lieve, cruel, ungenerous, or lascivious. I should 
not suspect Salvator of wantonly inflicting pain. 
His constantly painting it does not prove he de- 
lighted in it; he felt the horror of it, and in that 
horror fascination. Also he desired fame, and 
saw that here was an untried field rich enough 
in morbid excitement to catch the humour of 
his indolent patrons. But the gloom gained up- 
on him, and grasped him. He could jest, in- 
deed, as men jest in prison-yards (he became af- 
terwards a renowned mime in Florence); his 
satires are full of good mocking, but his own 
doom to sadness is never repealed. 

Of all men whose work I have ever studied, he 
gives me 'most distinctly the idea of a lost spirit. 
Michelet calls him " Ce damne Saivator," per- 
haps in a sense merely harsh and violent; the 
epithet to me seems true in a more literal, 
more merciful sense, — " That condemned Salva- 
tor." I see in him, notwithstanding all his base- 
ness, the last traces of spiritual life in the art of 
Europe. He was the last man to whom the 
thought of a spiritual existence presented itself 
as a conceivable reality. All succeeding men, 
however powerful — Rembrandt, Rubens, Van- 
dyck, Reynolds — would have mocked at the 
idea of a spirit. They were men of the world; 
they axe never m earnest, and they are never ap- 
palled. But Salvator was capable of pensiveness, 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 417 

of faith, and of fear. The misery of the earth 
is a marvel to him; he cannot leave off gazing at 
it. The religion of the earth is a horror to him. 
He gnashes his teeth at it, rages at it, mocks and 
gibes at it. He would have acknowledged relig- 
ion, had he seen any that was true. Anything 
rather than that baseness which he did see. " If 
there is no other religion than this of pope and 
cardinals, let us to the robber's ambush and the 
dragon's den." He was capable of fear also." 
The grey spectre, horse-headed, striding across 
the sky — (in the Pitti palace) — its bat wings 
spread, green bars of the twilight seen between its 
bones; it was no play to him — the painting of it. 
Helpless Salvator! A little early sympathy, a 
word of true guidance, perhaps, had saved him. 
What says he of himself ? Despiser of wealth 
and of death. Two grand scorns; but, oh, con- 
demned Salvator! the question is not for man 
what he can scorn, but what he can love. 

I do not care to trace the various hold which 
Hades takes on this fallen soul. It is no part of 
my work here to analyse his art, nor even that 
of Durer; all that we need to note is the oppo- 
site answer they gave to the question about 
death. 

To Salvator it came in narrow terms. Desola- 
tion, without hope, throughout the fields of na- 
ture, he had to explore; hypocrisy and sensual- 



41 8 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

ity, triumphant, and shameless, in the cities from 
which he derived his support. His life, so far as 
any nobility remained in it, could only pass in 
horror, disdain or despair. It is difficult to say 
which of the three prevails most in his common 
work; but his answer to the great question was 
of despair only. He represents " Umana Fragil- 
ita" by the type of a skeleton with plumy wings, 
leaning over a woman and child; the earth cov- 
ered with ruin round them — a thistle, casting its 
seed, the only fruit of it. " Thorns, also, and 
thistles shall it bring forth to thee." The same 
tone of thought marks all Salvator's more earn- 
est work. 

On the contrary, in the sight of Durer, things 
were for the most part as they ought to be. Men 
did their work in his city and in the fields round 
it. The clergy were sincere. Great social ques- 
tions unagitated; great social evils either non- 
existent, or seemingly a part of the nature of 
things, and inevitable. His answer was that of 
patient hope; and twofold, consisting of one de- 
sign in praise of Fortitude, and another in praise 
of Labour. The Fortitude, commonly known as 
the " Knight and Death," represents a knight 
riding through a dark valley overhung by leaf- 
less trees, and with a great castle on a hill be- 
yond. Beside him, but a little in advance, rides 
Death on a pale horse. Death is grey-haired 



PRECIOUS THOUGH rs. 4^9 

and crowned; — serpents wreathed about his 
crown (the sting of death involved in the kingly 
power). He holds up the hour-glass, and looks 
earnestly into the knight's face. Behind him 
follows Sin; but Sin powerless; he has been con- 
quered and passed by, but follows yet, watching 
if any way of assault remains. On his forehead 
are two horns — I think, of sea-shell — to indicate 
his insatiableness and instability. He has also 
the twisted horns of the ram, for stubbornness, 
the ears of an ass, the snout of a swine, the 
hoofs of a goat. Torn wings hang useless from 
his shoulders, and he carries a spear with two 
hooks, for catching as well as wounding. The 
knight does not heed him, nor even Death, 
though he is conscious of the presence of the 
last. 

He rides quietly, his bridle firm in his hand, 
and his lips set close in a slight sorrowful smile, 
for he hears what Death is saying; and hears it 
as the word of a messenger who brings pleasant 
tidings, thinking to bring evil ones. A little 
branch of delicate heath is twisted round his 
helmet. His horse trots proudly and straight; 
its head high, and with a cluster of oak on the 
brow where on the fiend's brow is the sea-shell 
horn. But the horse of Death stoops its head; 
and its rein catches the little bell which hangs 



420 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

from the knight's horse-bridle, making it toll, as 
a passing bell* 

Durer's second answer is the plate of " Melen- 
cholia," which is the history of the sorrowful 
toil of the earth, as the " Knight and Death " is 
of its sorrowful patience under temptation. 

Salvator's answer, remember, is in both re- 
spects that of despair. Death as he reads, lord 
of temptation, is victor over the spirit of man; 
and lord of ruin, is victor over the work of man. 
Durer declares the sad, but unsullied conquest 
over Death the tempter; and the sad, but endur- 
ing conquest over Death the destroyer. 

Though the general intent of the Melencholia 
is clear, and to be felt at a glance, I am in some 
doubt respecting its special symbolism. I do 
not know how far Durer intended to show that 
labour, in many of its most earnest forms, is 
closely connected with the morbid sadness or 
" dark anger," of the northern nations. Truly 

* This was first pointed out to me by a friend — Mr. 
Robert Allen. It is a beautiful thought; yet, possibly, 
an after-thought. I have some suspicion that there is an 
alteration in the plate at that place, and that the rope to 
which the bell hangs was originally the line of the chest 
of the nearest horse, as the grass-blades about the lifted 
hind leg conceal the lines which could not, in Durer's 
way of work, be effaced, indicating its first intended posi- 
tion. What a proof of his general decision of handling is 
involved in this " repentir '" 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 42 1 

some of the best work ever done for man, has 
been in that dark anger;* but I have not yet 
been able to determine for myself how far this 
is necessary, or how far great work may also be 
done with cheerfulness. If I knew what the 
truth was, I should be able to interpret Durer 
better; meantime the design seems tome his an- 
swer to the complaint, " Yet is his strength la- 
bour and sorrow." 

" Yes," he replies, " but labour and sorrow are 
his strength." 

The labour indicated is in the daily work of 
men. Not the inspired or gifted labour of the 
few (it is labour connected with the sciences, not 
with the arts), shown in its four chief functions: 
thoughtful, faithful, calculating and executing. 

Thoughtful, first; all true power coming of 
that resolved, resistless calm of melancholy 
thought. This is the first and last message of 
the whole design. Faithful, the right arm of the 

*" Yet withal, you see that the Monarch is a great, 
valiant, cautious, melancholy, commanding man." — 
Friends in Council, last volume, p. 269. Milverton giv- 
ing an account of Titian's picture of Charles the Fifth. 
(Compare Ellesmere's description of Milverton himself, 
p. 140.) Read carefully also what is said further on re- 
specting Titian's freedom, and fearless withholding of 
flattery; comparing it with the note on Giorgione and 
Titian. 



422 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

Spirit resting on the book. Calculating (chiefly 
in the sense of self-command), the compasses in 
her right hand. Executive — roughest instru- 
ments of labour at her feet: a crucible, and 
geometrical solids, indicating her work in the 
sciences. Over her head the hour-glass and the 
bell, for their continual words, *' Whatsoever thy 
hand findeth to do." Beside her, childish la- 
bour (lesson-learning?) sitting on an old mill- 
stone, with a tablet on its knees. I do not know 
what instrument it has in its hand. At her knees, 
a wolf-hound asleep. In the distance, a comet 
(the disorder and threatening of the universe) 
setting, the rainbow dominant over it. Her 
strong body is close girded for work; at her 
waist hang the keys of wealth; but the coin is 
cast aside contemptuously under her feet. She 
has eagles* wings, and is crowned with fair leaf- 
age of spring. 

Yes, Albert of Nuremberg, it was a noble an- 
swer, yet an imperfect one. This is indeed the 
labour which is crowned with laurel and has the 
wings of an eagle. It was reserved for another 
country to prove, for another hand to portray, 
the labour which is crowned with fire, and has 
the wings of the bat. 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 42.3 



CARE FOR POSTERITY. 

The benevolent regards and purposes of men 
in masses seldom can be supposed to extend be- 
yond their own generation. They may look to 
posterity as an audience, may hope for its atten- 
tion, and labour for its praise; they may trust to 
its recognition of unacknowledged merit, and de- 
mand its justice for contemporary wrong. But 
all this is mere selfishness, and does not involve 
the slightest regard to, or consideration of, the 
interests of those by whose numbers we would 
fain swell the circle of our flatterers, and by 
whose authority we would gladly support our 
presently disputed claims. The idea of self-de^ 
nial for the sake of posterity, of practising pres- 
ent economy for the sake of debtors yet unborn, 
of planting forests that our descendants may live 
under their shade, or of raising cities for future 
nations to inhabit, never, I suppose, efficiently 
takes place among publicly recognised motives 
of exertion. Yet these are not the less our du- 
ties; nor is our part fitly sustained upon the 
earth, unless the range of our intended and de- 
liberate usefulness include not only the compan- 
ions, but the successors, of our pilgrimage. God 
has lent us the eartli for our life; it is a great 
entail. It belongs as much to those who are to 
come after us, and whose names are already 



424 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

written in the book of creation, as to us; and we 
have no right, by anything that we do or neg- 
lect, to involve them in unnecessary penalties, 
or deprive them of benefits which it was in our 
power to bequeath. And this the more, because 
it is one of the appointed conditions of the la- 
bour of men that, in proportion to the time be- 
tween the seed-sowing and the harvest, is the 
fulness of the fruit; and that generally, there- ^ 
fore, the farther off we place our aim, and the * 
less we desire to be ourselves the witnesses of 
what we have laboured for, the more wide and 
rich will be the measure of our success. Men 
cannot benefit those that are with them as they 
can benefit those who come after them; and of 
all the pulpits from which human voice is ever 
sent forth, there is none from which it reaches 
so far as from the grave. 



GLOOM. 



It is not in the languor of a leisure hour that 
a man will set his whole soul to conceive the 
means of representing some important truth, nor 
to the projecting angle of a timber bracket that 
he would trust its representation, if conceived. 
And yet, in this languor, and in this trivial work, 
he must find some expression of the serious part 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 425 

of his soul, of what there is within him capable 
of awe, as well as of love. The more noble the 
man is, the more impossible it will be for him to 
confine his thoughts to mere loveliness, and that 
of a low order. Were his powers and his time 
unlimited, so that, like Fra Angelico, he could 
paint the Seraphim, in that order of beauty he 
could find contentment, bringing down heaven 
to earth. But by the conditions of his being, by 
his hard-worked life, by his feeble powers of exe- . 
cution, by the meanness of his employment and 
the languor of his heart, he is bound down to 
earth. It is the world's work that he is doing, 
and world's work is not to be done without fear. 
And whatever there is of deep and eternal con- 
sciousness within him, thrilling his mind with the 
sense of the presence of sin and death around 
him, must be expressed in that slight work, and 
feeble way, come of it what will. He cannot 
forget it, among all that he sees of beautiful in 
nature; he may not bury himself among the leaves 
of the violet on the rocks, and of the lily in the 
glen, and twine out of them garlands of perpetual 
gladness. He sees more in the earth than these, 
— misery and wrath, and discordance and dan- 
ger, and all the work of the dragon and his 
angels; this he sees with too deep feeling ever to 
forget. And though when he returns to his idle 
work, — it may be to gild the letters upon the 



426 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

page, or to carve the timbers of the chamber, or 
the stones of the pinnacle, — he cannot give his 
strength of thought any more to the woe or to 
the danger, there is a shadow of them still pres- 
ent with him: and as the bright colours mingle 
beneath his touch, and the fair leaves and flowers 
grow at his bidding, strange horrors and phan- 
tasms rise by their side; grisly beasts and ven- 
omous serpents, and spectral fiends and nameless 
inconsistencies of ghastly life, rising out of things 
most beautiful, and fading back into them again, 
as the harm and the horror of life do out of its 
happiness. He has seen these things; he wars 
with them daily; he cannot but give them their 
part in his work, though in a state of compara- 
tive apathy to them at the time. He is but carv- 
ing and gilding, and must not turn aside to weep; 
but he knows that hell is burning on, for all that, 
and the smoke of it withers his oak-leaves. 

Now, the feelings which give rise to the false 
or ignoble grotesque, are exactly the reverse of 
these. In the true grotesque, a man of naturally 
strong feeling is accidentally or resolutely apa- 
thetic; in the false grotesque, a man naturally 
apathetic is forcing himself into temporary ex- 
citement. The horror which is expressed by 
the one, comes upon him whether he will or not; 
that which is expressed by the other, is sought 
out by him, and elaborated by his art. And 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 42/ 

tlierefore, also, because the fear of the one is 
true, and of true things, however fantastic its ex- 
pression may be, there will be reality in it, and 
force. It is not a manufactured terribleness 
whose author, when he had finished it, knew not 
if it would terrify any one else or not: but it is 
a terribleness taken from the life; a spectre 
which the workman indeed saw, and which, as 
it appalled him, will appal us also. But the 
other workman never felt any Divine fear; he 
never shuddered when he heard the cry from the 
burning towers of the earth, 

" Venga Medusa; si lo farem di smalto." 

He is stone already, and needs no gentle hand 
laid upon his eyes to save him. 



NOTHING BUT TRUTH. 

Let me declare, without qualification — that 
partial conception is no conception. The whole 
picture must be imagined, or none of it is. And 
this grasp of the whole implies very strange and 
sublime qualities of mind. It is not possible, 
unless the feelings are completely under control; 
the least excitement or passion will disturb the 
measured equity of power; a painter needs to be 
as cool as a general; and as little moved or sub- 



428 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

dued by his sense of pleasure, as a soldier by the 
sense of pain. Nothing good can be done with- 
out intense feeling; but it must be feeling so 
crushed, that the work is set about with mechani- 
cal steadiness, absolutely untroubled, as a sur- 
geon, — not without pity, but conquering it and 
putting it aside — begins an operation. Until 
the feelings can give strength enough to the will 
to enable it to conquer them, they are not strong 
enough. If you cannot leave your picture at any 
moment; — cannot turn from it and go on with 
another, while the colour is drying; — cannot 
work at any part of it you choose with equal 
contentment — you have not firm enough grasp 
of it. 

It follows also, that no vain or selfish person 
can possibly paint, in the noble sense of the 
word. Vanity and selfishness are troublous, 
eager, anxious, petulant: — painting can only be 
done in calm of mind. Resolution is not enough 
to secure this; it must be secured by disposition 
as well. You may resolve to think of your pic- 
ture only; but, if you have been fretted before 
beginning, no manly or clear grasp of it will be 
possible for you. No forced calm is calm enough. 
Only honest calm, — natural calm. You might 
as well try by external pressure to smooth a lake 
till it could reflect the sky, as by violence of 
effort to sechre the peace through which only 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 429 

you can reach imagination. That peace must 
come in its own time; as the waters settle them- 
selves into clearness as well as quietness; you 
can no more filter your mind into purity than 
you can compress it into calmness; you must 
keep it pure, if you would have it pure; and 
throw no stones into it, if you would have it 
quiet. Great courage and self-command may, 
to a certain extent, give power of painting with- 
out the true calmness underneath; but never of 
doing first-rate work. There is sufficient evi- 
dence of this, in even what we know of great 
men, though of the greatest, we nearly always 
know the least (and that necessarily; they being 
very silent, and not much given to setting them- 
selves forth to questioners; apt to be contempt- 
uously reserved, no less than unselfishly). But 
in such writings and sayings as we possess of 
theirs, we may trace a quite curious gentleness 
and serene courtesy. Rubens' letters are almost 
ludicrous in their unhurried politeness. Rey- 
nolds, swiftest of painters, was gentlest of com- 
panions; so also Velasquez, Titian, and Vero- 
nese. 

It is gratuitous to add that no shallow or 
petty person can paint. Mere cleverness or 
special gift never made an artist. It is only 
perfectness of mind, unity, depth, decision, the 



430 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

liighest qualities, in fine, of the intellect, which 
will form the imagination. 

And, lastly, no false person can paint. A 
person false at heart may, when it suits his pur- 
poses, seize a stray truth here or there; but the 
relations of truth, — its perfectness, — that which 
makes it wholesome truth, he can never per- 
ceive. As wholeness and wholesomeness go to- 
gether, so also sight with sincerity; it is only 
the constant desire of, and submissiveness to 
truth, which can measure its strange angles and 
mark its infinite aspects; and fit them and knit 
them into the strength of sacred invention. 

Sacred, I call it deliberately; for it is thus, in 
the most accurate senses, humble as well as 
helpful; meek in its receiving as magnificent in 
its disposing; the name it bears being rightly 
given to invention formal, not because it 
forms, but because it finds. For you cannot 
find a lie; you must make it for yourself. False 
things may be imagined, and false things com- 
posed; but only truth can be invented. 



INFIDELITY. 

It is written, " He that trusteth in his own 
heart is a fool," so also it is written, " The fool 
hath said in his heart, There is no God;" and 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 431 

the self-adulation which influenced not less the 
.earning of the age than its luxury, led gradually 
to the forgetfulness of all things but self, and to 
an infidelity only the more fatal because it still 
retained the form and language of faith. 

In noticing the more prominent forms in 
which this faithlessness manifested itself, it is 
necessary to distinguish justly between that 
which was the consequence of respect for Pag- 
anism, and that which followed from the cor- 
ruption of Catholicism. For as the P^oman 
architecture is not to be made answerable for 
the primal corruption of the Gothic, so neither 
is the Roman philosophy to be made answerable 
for the primal corruption of Christianity. Year 
after year, as the history of the life of Christ 
sank back into the depth of time, and became 
obscured by the misty atmosphere of the history 
of the world, — as intermediate actions and in- 
cidents multiplied in number, and countless 
changes in men's modes of life, and tones of 
thought, rendered it more difficult for them to 
imagine the facts of distant time, — it became 
daily, almost hourly, a greater effort for the 
faithful heart to apprehend the entire veracity 
and vitality of the story of its Redeemer; and 
more easy for the thoughtless and remiss to de- 
ceive themselves as to the true character of the 
belief they have been taught to profess. And 



432 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

this must have been the case, had the pastors of 
the Church never failed in their watchfuhiess, 
and the Church itself never erred in its practice 
or doctrine. But when every year that removed 
the truths of the Gospel into deeper distance, 
added to them also some false or foolish tradi- 
tion; when wilful distortion was added to natu- 
ral obscurity, and the dimness of memory was 
disguised by the fruitfulness of fiction; when, 
moreover, the enormous temporal power granted 
to the clergy attracted into their ranks multi- 
tudes of men who, but for such temptation, 
would not have pretended to the Christian 
name, so that grievous wolves entered in among 
them, not sparing the flock; and when, by the 
machinations of such men, and the remissness of 
others, the form and administration of Church 
doctrine and discipline had become little more 
than a means of aggrandizing the power of the 
priesthood, it was impossible any longer for 
men of thoughtfulness or piety to remain in an 
unquestioning serenity of faith. The Church 
had become so mingled with the world that its 
witness could no longer be received; and the 
professioning members of it, who were placed in 
circumstances such as to enable them to become 
aware of its corruptions, and whom their interest 
or their simplicity did not bribe or beguile into 
silence, gradually separated themselves into twc-^ 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 433 

vast multitudes of adverse energy, one tending 
to Reformation, and the other to Infidelity. 

Of these, the last stood, as it were, apart, to 
watch the course of the struggle between Roman- 
ism and Protestantism, a struggle which, how- 
ever necessary, was attended with infinite calam- 
ity to the Church. For, in the first place, the 
Protestant movement was, in reality, not re- 
formation but xtanimatta/i. It poured new life 
into the Church, but it did not form or define 
her anew. In some sort it rather broke down 
her hedges, so that all they who passed by might 
pluck off her grapes. The reformer speedily 
found that the enemy was never far behind the 
sower of good seed; that an evil spirit might 
enter the ranks of reformation as well as those 
of resistance; and that though the deadly blight 
might be checked amidst the wheat, there was 
no hope of ever ridding the wheat itself from the 
tares. New temptations were invented by Satan 
wherewith to oppose the revived strength of 
Christianity: as the Romanist, confiding in his 
human teachers, had ceased to try whether they 
were teachers sent from God, so the Protestant, 
confiding in the teaching of the Spirit, believed 
every spirit, and did not try the spirit whether 
they were of God. And a thousand enthusi- 
asms and heresies speedily obscured the faith 
and divided the force of the Reformation. 



434 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

But the main evils rose out of the antst^onism 
of the two great parties; primarily, in the mere 
fact of the existence of an antagonism. To the 
eyes of the unbeliever the Church of Christ, for 
the first time since its foundation, bore the 
aspect of a house divided against itself. Not 
that many forms of schism had not before arisen 
in it; but either they had been obscure and 
silent, hidden among the shadows of the Alps 
and the marshes of the Rhine; or they had been 
outbreaks of visible and unmistakable error, ca^L 
off by the Church, rootless, and speedily wither- 
ing away, while, with much that was erring and 
criminal, she still retained within her the pillar 
and ground of the truth. But here was at last 
a schism in which truth and authority were at 
issue. The body that was cast off withered 
away no longer. It stretched out its boughs to 
the sea and its branches to the river, and it was 
the ancient trunk that gave signs of decrepitude. 
On one side stood the reanimated faith, in its 
right hand the book open, and its left hand 
lifted up to heaven, appealing for its proof to 
the Word of the Testimony and the power of 
the Holy Ghost. On the other stood, or seemed 
to stand, all beloved custom and believed tradi- 
tion; all that for fifteen hundred years had been 
closest to the hearts of men, or most precious 
for their help. Long-trusted legend; long-rev- 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 435 

erenced power; long-practised discipline; faiths 
that had ruled the destiny, and sealed the de- 
parture, of souls that could not be told or num- 
bered for multitude; prayers, that from the lips 
of the fathers to those of the children had dis- 
tilled like sweet waterfalls, sounding through the 
silence of ages, breaking themselves into heaven- 
ly dew to return upon the pastures of the wilder- 
ness; hopes, that had set the face as a flint in 
the torture, and the sword as a flame in the bat- 
tle, that had pointed the ' purposes and minis- 
tered the strength of life, brightened the last 
glances and shaped the last syllables of death; 
charities, that had bound together the brother- 
hoods of the mountain and the desert, and had 
woven chains of pitying or aspiring communion 
between this world and the unfathomable be- 
neath and above; and, more than these, the 
spirits of all the innumerable, undoubting, dead, 
beckoning to the one way by which they had 
been content to follow the things that belonged 
unto their peace; — these all stood on the other 
side: and the choice must have been a bitter 
one, even at the best; but it was rendered ten- 
fold more bitter by the natural, but most sinful 
animosity of the two divisions of the Church 
against each other. 

On one side this animosity was, of course, in- 
evitable. The Romanist party, though still in- 



43^ PRECIOUS THOUGHTS, 

eluding many Christian men, necessarily included, 
also, all the worst of those who called themselves 
Christians. In the fact of its refusing correction, 
it stood confessed as the Church of the unholy; 
and, while it still counted among its adherents 
many of the simple and believing, — men unac- 
quainted with the corruption of the body to 
which they belonged, or incapable of accepting 
any form of doctrine but that which they had 
been taught from their youth, — it gathered to- 
gether with them whatever was carnal and sen- 
sual in priesthood or in people, all the lovers of 
power in the one, and of ease in the other. And 
the rage of these men was, of course, unlimited 
against those who either disputed their authority, 
reprehended their manner of life, or cast suspi- 
cion upon the popular methods of lulling the con- 
science in the lifetime, or purchasing salvation on 
the death-bed. 

Besides this, the reassertion and defence of 
various tenets which before had been little more 
than floating errors in the popular mind, but 
which, definitely attacked by Protestantism, it 
became necessary to fasten down with a band of 
iron and brass, gave a form at once more rigid, 
and less rational, to the whole body of Romanist 
Divinity. Multitudes of minds which in other 
ages might have brought honour and strength to 
the Church, preaching the more vital truths 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS, 437" 

which it still retained, were now occupied in 
pleading for arraigned falsehoods, or magnifying 
disused frivolities: and it can hardly be doubted 
by any candid observer, that the nascent or 
latent errors which God pardoned in times of ig- 
norance, became unpardonable when they were 
formally defined and defended; that fallacies 
which were forgiven to the enthusiasm of a mul- 
titude, were avenged upon the stubbornness of a 
Council; that, above all, the great invention of 
the age, which rendered God's word accessible to 
every man, left all sins against its light incapable 
of excuse or expiation; and that from the mo- 
ment when Rome set herself in direct opposition 
to the Bible, the judgment was pronounced upon 
her, which made her the scorn and the prey of 
her own children, and cast her down from the- 
throne where she had magnified herself against 
heaven, so low, that at last the unimaginable 
scene of the Bethlehem humiliation was mocked 
in the temples of Christianity. Judea had seen 
her God laid in the manger of the beast of bur- 
den; it was for Christendom to stable the beasc 
of burden by the altar of her God. 

Nor, on the other hand, was the opposition of 
Protestantism to the Papacy less injurious to it- 
self. That opposition was, for the most part, in- 
temperate, undistinguishing, and incautious. It 
could indeed hardly be otherwise. Fresh bleed- 



43 8 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

ing from the sword of Rome, and still trembling 
at her anathema, the reformed churches were lit- 
tle likely to remember any of her benefits, or to 
regard any of her teaching. Forced by the Ro- 
manist contumely into habits of irreverence, by 
the Romanist fallacies into habits of of disbelief, 
the self-trusting, rashly-reasoning spirit gained 
ground among them daily. Sect branched out 
of sect, presumption rose over presumption; the 
miracles of the early Church were denied and its 
martyrs forgotten, though their power and palm 
were claimed by the members of every persecuted 
sect; pride, malice, wrath, love of change, 
masked themselves under the thirst for truth, 
and mingled with the just resentment of decep- 
tion, so that it became impossible even for the 
best and truest men to know the plague of their 
own hearts; while avarice and impiety openly 
transformed reformation into robbery, and re- 
proof into sacrilege. Ignorance could as easily 
lead the foes of the. Church, as lull her slumber; 
men who would once have been the unquestion- 
ing recipients, were now the shameless inventors 
of absurd or perilous superstitions; they who 
were of the temper that walketh in darkness, 
gained little by having discovered their guides 
to be blind; and the simplicity of the faith, ill 
understood and contumaciously alleged, became 
an excuse for the rejection of the highest arts and 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 439> 

most tried wisdom of mankind: while the learned 
infidel, standing aloof, drew his own conclusions, 
both from the rancour of the antagonists, and 
from their errors; believed each in all that he al- 
leged against the other; and smiled with superior 
humanity, as he watched the winds of the Alps 
drift the ashes of Jerome, and the dust of Eng- 
land drink the blood of King Charles. 

Now all this evil was, of course, entirely inde- 
pendent of the renewal of the study of Pagan 
writers. But that renewal found the faith of 
Christendom already weakened and divided; and 
therefore it was itself productive of an effect ten- 
fold greater than could have been apprehended 
from it at another time. It acted first, as before 
noticed, in leading the attention of all men to 
words instead of things; for it was discovered 
that the language of the middle ages had been 
corrupt, and the primal object of every scholar 
became now to purify his style. To this study 
of words, that of forms being added, both as of 
matters of the first importance, half the intellect 
of the age was at once absorbed in the base 
sciences of grammar, logic, and rhetoric; studies 
utterly unworthy of the serious labour of men, 
and necessarily rendering those employed upon 
them incapable of high thoughts or noble emo- 
tions. Of the debasing tendency of philology, 
no proof is needed beyond once reading a gram- 



440 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

marian's notes on a great poet: logic is unneces- 
sary for men who can reason; and about as use- 
ful to those who cannot, as a machine for forcing 
one foot in due succession before the other 
would be to a man who could not walk: while 
the study of rhetoric is exclusively one for men 
who desire to deceive or be deceived; he who 
has the truth at his heart need never fear the 
want of persuasion on his tongue, or, if he fear 
it, it is because the base rhetoric of dishonesty 
keeps the truth from being heard. 

The study of these sciences, therefore, natu- 
rally made men shallow and dishonest in general; 
but it had a peculiarly fatal effect v/ith respect to 
religion, in the view which men took of the Bible. 
Christ's teaching was discovered not to be rhe- 
torical, St. Paul's preaching not to be logical, and 
the Greek of the New Testament not to be gram- 
matical. The stern truth, the profound pathos, 
the impatient* period, leaping from point to point 
and leaving the intervals for the hearer to fill, the 
comparatively Hebraized and unelaborate idiom, 
had little in them of attraction for the students 
of phrase and syllogism: and the chief knowl- 
edge of the age became one of the chief stum- 
bling-blocks to its religion. 

But it was not the grammarian and logician 
alone who was thus retarded or perverted; in 
them there had been small loss. The men who 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 44 1 

could truly appreciate the higher excellencies of 
the classics were carried away by a current of 
enthusiasm which withdrew them from every 
other study. Christianity was still professed as 
a matter of form, but neither the Bible nor the 
writings of the Fathers had time left for their 
perusal, still less heart left for their acceptance. 
The human mind is not capable of more than a 
certain amount of admiration or reverence, and 
that which was given to Horace was withdrawn 
from David. Religion is, of all subjects, that 
which will least endure a second place in the 
heart or thoughts, and a languid and occasional 
study of it was sure to lead to error or infidelity. 
On the other hand, what was heartily admired 
and unceasingly contemplated was soon brought 
nigh to being believed; and the systems of Pagan 
mythology began gradually to assume the places 
in the human mind from which the unwatched 
Christianity was wasting. Men did not indeed 
openly sacrifice to Jupiter, or build silver shrines 
for Diana, but the ideas of Paganism neverthe- 
less became thoroughly vital and present with 
them at all times; and it did not matter in the 
least, as far as respected the power of true relig- 
ion, whether the Pagan image v/as believed in or 
not, so long as it entirely occupied the thoughts, 
The scholar of the sixteenth century, if he saw 
the lightning shining from the east unto the west, 



442 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

thought forthwith of Jupiter, not of the coming 
of the Son of man; if he saw the moon walking 
in brightness, he thought of Diana, not of the 
throne which was to be established for ever as a 
faithful witness in heaven; and though his heart 
was but secretly enticed, yet thus he denied the 
God that is above.* 

And, indeed, this double creed, of Christianity 
confessed and Paganism beloved, was worse than 
Paganism itself, inasmuch as it refused effective 
and practical belief altogether. It would have 
been better to have worshipped Diana and Jupiter 
at once, than to have gone on through the whole 
of life naming one God, imagining another, and 
dreading none. Better, a thousandfold, to have 
been " a Pagan suckled in some creed outworn,'^ 
than to have stood by the great sea of Eternity^ 
and seen no God walking on its waves, no 
heavenly world on its horizon. 

This fatal result of an enthusiasm for classical 
literature was hastened and heightened by the 
misdirection of the powers of art. The imagi- 
nation of the age was actively set to realise these 
objects of Pagan belief; and all the most exalted 
faculties of man, which, up to that period, had 
been employed in the service of Faith, were now 
transferred to the service of Fiction. The in- 

* Job, xxxi. 26-28; Psalm Ixxxix. 37. 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. ^3 

vention which had formerly been both sanctified 
and strengthened by labouring under the com- 
mand of settled intention, and on the ground of 
assured belief, had now the reins laid upon its 
neck by passion, and all grounds of fact cut from 
beneath its feet; and the imagination which for- 
merly had helped men to apprehend the truth, 
now tempted them to believe a falsehood. The 
faculties themselves wasted away in their own 
treason; one by one they fell in the potters' 
field; and the Raphael who seemed sent and in- 
spired from heaven that he might paint Apostles 
and Prophets, sank at once into powerlessness at 
the feet of Apollo and the Muses. 

But this was not all. The habit of using the 
greatest gifts of imagination upon fictitious sub- 
jects, of course destroyed the honour and value 
of the same imagination used in the cause of 
truth. Exactly in the proportion in which Jup- 
iters and Mercuries were embodied and believed, 
in that proportion Virgins and Angels were dis- 
embodied and disbelieved. The images sum- 
moned by art began gradually to assume one 
average value in the spectator's mind; and inci- 
dents from the Iliad and from the Exodus to 
come within the same degrees of credibility. 



444 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 



THE TWO BOYHOODS. 

Bom half-way between the mountains and the 
sea — that young George of Castelfranco — of the 
Brave Castle: — Stout George they called him, 
George of Georges, so goodly a boy he was — 
Giorgione. 

Have you ever thought what a world his eyes 
opened on — fair, searching eyes of youth? What 
a world of mighty life, from those mountain roots 
to the shore; — of loveliest life, when he went 
down, yet so young, to the marble city — and 
became himself as a fiery heart to it? 

A city of marble, did I say? nay, rather a 
golden city, paved with emerald. For truly, 
every pinnacle and turret glanced or glowed, 
overlaid with gold, or bossed with jasper. 
Beneath, the unsullied sea drew in deep breath- 
ing, to and fro, its eddies of green wave. Deep- 
hearted, majestic, terrible as the sea, — the men 
of Venice moved in sway of power and war; pure 
as her pillars of alabaster, stood her mothers and 
maidens; from foot to brow, all noble, walked 
her knights; the low bronzed gleaming of sea- 
rusted armour shot angrily under their blood-red 
mantle-folds. Fearless, faithful, patient, impene- 
trable, implacable, — every word a fate, — sate her 
senate. In hope and honour, lulled by flowing 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 445 

of wave around their isles of sacred sand, each 
with his name written and the cross graved at 
his side, lay her dead. A wonderful piece of 
world. Rather, itself a world. It lay along the 
face of the waters, no larger, as its captains saw 
it from their masts at evening, than a bar of sun- 
set that could not pass away; but, for its power, 
it must have seemed to them as if they were sail- 
ing in the expanse of heaven, and this a great 
planet, whose orient edge widened through ether. 
A world from which all ignoble care and petty 
thoughts were banished, with all the common and 
poor elements of life. No foulness nor tumult, 
in .those tremulous streets, that filled, or fell, be- 
neath the moon; but rippled music of majestic 
change, or thrilling silence. No weak walls could 
rise above them; no low-roofed cottage, nor straw- 
built shed. Only the strength as of rock, and 
the finished setting of stones most precious. And 
around them, far as the eye could reach, still the 
soft moving of stainless waters, proudly pure; as 
not the flower, so neither the thorn nor the thistle, 
could grow in the glancing fields. Ethereal 
strength of Alps, dream-like, vanishing in high 
procession beyond the Torcellan shore; blue 
islands of Paduan hills, poised in the golden west. 
Above, free winds and fiery clouds ranging at 
their mil; — brightness out of the north, and balm 
from the south, and the stars of the evening and 



44^ PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

morning clear in the limitless light of arched 
heaven and circling sea. 

Such was Giorgione's school — such Titian's 
home. 

Near the south-west corner of Covent Garden, a 
square brick pit or well is formed by a close-set 
block of houses, to the back windows of which it 
admits a few rays of light. Access to the bottom 
of it is obtained out of Maiden Lane, through a 
low archway and an iron gate; and if you stand 
long enough under the archway to accustom your 
eyes to the darkness, you may see on the left 
hand a narrow door, which formerly gave quiet 
access to a respectable barber's shop, of which 
the front window, looking into Maiden Lane, is 
still extant, filled in this year (i860) with a row 
of bottles, connected, in some defunct manner, 
with a brewer's business. A more fashionable 
neighbourhood, it is said, eighty years ago than 
now — never certainly a cheerful one — wherein a 
boy being born on St. George's day, 1775, ^^- 
gan soon after to take interest in the world of 
Covent Garden, and put to service such spec- 
tacles of life as it afforded. 

No knights to be seen there, nor, I imagine, 
many beautiful ladies; their costume at least dis- 
advantageous, depending much on incumbency of 
hat and feather, and short waists; the majesty of 
men founded similarly on shoebuckles and wigs; 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS, 447 

— impressive enough when Reynolds will do his 
best for it; but not suggestive of much ideal 
delight to a boy. 

"Bello ovile dov' io dormii agnello:" of things 
beautiful, besides men and women, dusty sun- 
beams up or down the street on summer morn- 
ings ; deep furrowed cabbage leaves at the green- 
grocer's ; magnificence of oranges in wheelbarrows 
round the corner; and Thames' shore within 
three minutes' race. 

None of these things very glorious; the best, 
however, that England, it seems, was then abltf 
to provide for a boy of gift: who, such as they 
are, loves them — never, indeed, forgets them. 
The short waists modify to the last his visions of 
Greek ideal. His foregrounds had always a 
succulent cluster or two of greengrocery at the 
corners. Enchanted oranges gleam in Covent 
Gardens of the Hesperides; and great ships go 
to pieces in order to scatter chests of them 
on the waves. That mist of early sunbeams in 
the London dawn crosses, many and many a 
time, the clearness of Italian air; and by Thames* 
shore, with its stranded barges and glidings of red 
sail, dearer to us than Lucerne lake or Venetian 
lagoon, — by Thames' shore we will die. 

With such circumstance round him in youth, 
let us note what necessary effects followed upon 
the boy. I assume him to have had Giorgione's 



448 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

sensibility (and more than Giorgione's, if that be 
possible) to colour and form. I tell you farther, 
and this fact you may receive trustfully, that his 
sensibility to human affection and distress was no 
less keen than even his sense for natural beauty 
— heart-sight deep as eye-sight. 

Consequently, he attaches himself with the 
faithfullest child-love to everything that bears an 
image of the place he was born in. No matter 
how ugly it is, — has it anything about it like 
Maiden Lane, or like Thames' shore? If so, it 
shall be painted for their sake. Hence, to the 
very close of life, Turner could endure ugliness 
which no one else of the same sensibility would 
have borne with for an instant. Dead brick 
walls, blank square windows, old clothes, market- 
womanly types of humanity — anything fishy and 
muddy, like Billingsgate or Hungerford Market, 
had great attraction for him; black barges, 
patched sails, and every possible condition of fog. 

"That mysterious forest below London Bridge" 
— better for the boy than wood of pine, or grove 
of myrtle. How he must have tormented the 
watermen, beseeching them to let him crouch 
anywhere in the bows, quiet as a log, so only that 
he might get floated down there among the ships, 
and round and round the ships, and with the 
ships, and by the ships, and under the ships, star- 
ing and clambering; — these the only quite beauti- 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 449 

ful things he can see in all the world, except the 
sky; but these, when the sun is on their sails 
filling or falling, endlessly disordered by sway of 
tide and stress of anchorage, beautiful unspeaka- 
bly; which ships also are inhabited by gHorious 
creatures — red-faced sailors, with pipes, appear- 
ing over the gunwales, true knights, over their 
castle parapets — the most angelic beings in the 
whole compass of London world. And Trafalgar 
happening long before we can draw ships, we, 
nevertheless, coax all current stories out of the 
wounded sailors, do our best at present to show 
Nelson's funeral streaming up the Thames; and 
vow that Trafalgar shall have its tribute of mem- 
ory some day. Which, accordingly, is accom- 
plished — once, with all our might, for its death; 
twice, with all our might, for its victory; thrice, 
in pensive farewell to the old Temeraire, and, 
with it, to that order of things. 

Now this fond companying with sailors must 
have divided his time, it appears to me, pretty 
equally between Covent Garden and Wapping 
(allowing for incidental excursions to Chelsea on 
one side, and Greenwich on the other), which 
time he would spend pleasantly, but not magnifi- 
cently, being limited in pocket-money, and lead- 
ing a kind of " Poor Jack" life on the river. 

In some respects, no life could be better for a 
lad. But it was not calculated to make his ear 



450 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

fine to the. niceties of language, nor form his 
moralities on an entirely regular standard. Pick- 
ing up his first scraps of vigorous English chiefly 
at Deptford and in the markets, and his first ideas 
•of female tenderness and beauty among nymphs 
•of the barge and the barrow — another boy might, 
perhaps, have become what people usually term 
" vulgar." But the original make and frame of 
Turner's mind being not vulgar, but as nearly as 
possible a combination of the minds of Keats 
and Dante, joining capricious waywardness and 
intense openness to every fine pleasure of sense, 
and hot defiance of formal precedent, with a 
quite infinite tenderness, generosity, and desire 
of justice and truth — this kind of mind did not 
become vulgar, but very tolerant of vulgarity, 
even fond of it in some forms; and, on the out- 
side, visibly infected by it, deeply enough; the 
curious result, in its combination of elements, 
being to most people wholly incomprehensible. 

-It was as if a cable had been woven of blood- 

? crimson silk, and then tarred on the outside. 

' People handled it, and the tar came off on their 
hands; red gleams were seen through the black, 
underneath, at the places where it had been 
strained. Was it ochre? — said the world, or red 

lead? 

Schooled thus in manners, literature, and gen- 

■eral moral principles at Chelsea and Wapping, 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 451 

we have finally to inquire concerning the most 
important point of all. We have seen the princi- 
pal differences between this boy and Giorgione, 
as respects sight of the beautiful, understanding 
of poverty, of commerce, and of order of battle; 
then follows another cause of difference in our 
training — not slight, — the aspect of religion, 
namely, in the neighborhood of Covent Garden. 
I say the aspect; for that was all the lad could 
judge by. Disposed, for the most part, to learn 
chiefly by his eyes, in this special matter he finds 
there is really no other way of learning. His 
father taught him " to lay one penny upon anoth- 
er." Of mother's teaching, we hear of none; of 
parish pastoral teaching, the reader may guess 
how much. 

I choose Giorgione rather than Veronese to 
help me in carrying out this parallel; because I 
do not find in Giorgione's work any of the early 
Venetian monachist element. He seems to me 
to have belonged more to an abstract contem- 
plative school. I may be wrong in this; it is no 
matter; — suppose it were so, and that he came, 
down to Venice somewhat recusant, or insentient, 
concerning the usual priestly doctrines of his day, 
— how would the Venetian religion, from an 
outer intellectual standing-point, have looked to 
him? 

He would have seen it to be a religion indis- 



452 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

putably powerful in human affairs; often very 
harmfully so; sometimes devouring widows' 
houses, and consuming the strongest and fairest 
from among the young; freezing into merciless 
bigotry the policy of the old: also, on the other 
hand, animating national courage, and raising 
souls, otherwise sordid, into heroism: on the 
whole, always a real and great power; served 
with daily sacrifice of gold, time, and thought; 
putting forth its claims, if hypocritically, at least 
in bold hypocrisy, not waiving any atom of them 
in doubt or fear; and, assuredly, in large meas- 
ure, sincere, believing in itself, and believed: a 
goodly system, moreover, in aspect; gorgeous, 
harmonious, mysterious; — a thing which had 
either to be obeyed or combated, but could 
not be scorned. A religion towering over all 
the city — many buttressed — luminous in marble 
stateliness, as the dome of our Lady of Safety 
shines over the sea; many voiced also, giving, 
over all the eastern seas, to the sentinel his watch- 
word, to the soldier his war-cry; and, on the lips 
of all who died for Venice, shaping the whisper 
of death. 

I suppose the boy Turner to have regarded 
the religion of his city also from an external in- 
tellectual standing-point. 

What did he see in Maiden Lane? 

Let not the reader be offended with me; I am 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 453 

willing to let him describe, at his own pleasure, 
what Turner saw there; but to me, it seems to 
have been this. A religion maintained occa- 
sionally, even the whole length of the lane, at 
point of constable's staff; but, at other times, 
placed under the custody of the beadle, within 
certain black and unstately iron railings of St. 
Paul's, Covent Garden. Among the wheelbar- 
rows and over the vegetables, no perceptible 
dominance of religion; in the narrow, disquieted 
streets, none; in the tongues, deeds, daily ways 
of Maiden Lane, little. Some honesty, indeed, 
and English industry, and kindness of heart, 
and general idea of justice; but faith, of any 
national kind, shut up from one Sunday to the 
next, not artistically beautiful even in those 
Sabbatical exhibitions; its paraphernalia being 
chiefly of high pews, heavy elocution, and cold 
grimness of behaviour. 

What chiaroscuro belongs to it — (dependent 
mostly on candle light), — we will, however, 
draw, considerably; no goodliness of escutcheon, 
nor other respectability being omitted, and the 
best of their results confessed, a meek old 
woman and a child being let into a pew, for 
whom the reading by candlelight will be benefi- 
cial. 

For the rest, this religion seems to him dis- 
creditable — discredited — not believing in itself, 



454 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

putting forth its authority in a cowardly way,, 
watching how far it might be tolerated, continu- 
ally shrinking, disclaiming, fencing, finessing;, 
divided against itself, not by stormy rents, but 
by thin fissures, and splittings of plaster from 
the walls. Not to be either obeyed, or com- 
bated, by an ignorant, yet clear-sighted youth; 
only to be scorned. And scorned not one whit 
the less, though also the dome dedicated to if 
looms high over distant winding of the Thames; 
as St. Mark's campanile rose, for goodly land- 
mark, over mirage of lagoon. For St. Mark 
ruled over life; the Saint of London over death; 
St. Mark over St. Mark's Place, but St. Paul 
over St. Paul's Churchyard. 

Under these influences pass away the first re- 
flective hours of life, with such conclusion as 
they can reach. In consequence of a fit of ill- 
ness, he was taken — I cannot ascertain in what 
year — to live with an aunt, at Brentford; and 
here, I believe, received some schooling, which 
he seems to have snatched vigorously; getting 
knowledge, at least by translation, of the more 
picturesque classical authors, which he turned 
presently to use, as we shall see. Hence also, 
walks about Putney and Twickenham in the 
summer time acquainted him with the look of 
English meadow-ground in its restricted states 
of paddock and park; and with some round- 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 455 

headed appearances of trees, and stately entrances 
to houses of mark, the avenue of Bushy, and the 
iron gates and carved pillars of Hampton, im 
pressing him apparently with great awe and 
admiration; so that in after life his little coun- 
try house is, — of all places in the world, — at 
Twickenham! Of swans and reedy shores he 
now learns the soft motion and the green 
mystery, in a way not to be forgotten. 

And at last fortune wills that the lad's true 
life shall begin; and one summer's evening, 
after various wonderful stage-coach experiences 
on the north road, which gave him a love of 
stage-coaches ever after, he finds himself sitting 
alone among the Yorkshire hills.* For the first 
time, the silence of Nature round him, her free- 
dom sealed to him, her glory opened to him. 
Peace at last; nor roll of cart-wheel, nor mutter 
of sullen voices in the back shop; but curlew- 
cry in space of heaven, and welling of bell-toned 
streamlet by its shadowy rock. Freedom at 
last. Dead-wall, dark railing, fenced field, gated 
garden, all passed away like the dream of a pris- 
oner; and behold, far as foot or eye can race or 

* I do not mean that this is his first acquaintance with 
the country, but the first impressive and touching one, 
after his mind was formed. The earliest sketches I found 
in the National collection are at Clifton and Bristol, the 
next, at O^Jord. 



45^ PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

range, the moor, and cloud. Loveliness at last 
It is here then, among these deserted vales! 
Not among men. Those pale, poverty-struck, 
or cruel faces; — that multitudinous, marred hu- 
manity — are not the only things that God has 
made. Here is something He has made which 
no one has marred. Pride of purple rocks, and 
river pools of blue, and tender wilderness of glit- 
tering trees, and misty lights of evening on im- 
measurable hills. 

Beauty, and freedom, and peace; and yet an- 
other teacher, graver than these. Sound preach- 
ing at last here, in Kirkstall crypt, concerning 
fate and life. Here, where the dark pool re- 
flects the chancel pillars, and the cattle lie in 
unhindered rest, the soft sunshine on their dap- 
pled bodies, instead of priests' vestments; their 
white furry hair ruffled a little, fitfully, by the 
evening wind, deep-scented from the meadow 
thyme. 

Consider deeply the import to him of this, his 
first sight of ruin, and compare it with the effect 
of the architecture that was around Giorgione. - 
There were indeed aged buildings, at Venice, in 
his time, but none in decay. All ruin was re- 
moved, and its place filled as quickly as in our 
London; but filled always by architecture loftier 
and more wonderful than that whose place it 
took, the boy himself happy to work upon the 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 4$? 

walls of it; so that the idea of the passing away 
of the strength of men and beauty of their works 
never could occur to him sternly. Brighter and 
brighter the cities of Italy had been rising and 
broadening on hill and plain, for three hundred 
years. He saw only strength and immortality, 
could not but paint both; conceived the form 
of man as deathless, calm with power, and fiery 
with life. 

Turner saw the extract reverse of this. In 
the present work of men, meanness, aimlessness, 
unsightliness: thin-walled, lath-divided, narrow- 
garreted houses of clay; booths of a darksome 
Vanity Fair, busily base. 

But on Whitby Hill, and by Bolton Brook, 
remained traces of other handiwork. Men who 
could build had been there; and who also had 
wrought, not merely for their own days. But to 
what purpose? Strong faith and steady hands, 
and patient souls — can this, then, be all you 
have left! this the sum of your doing on the 
earth! — a nest whence the night-owl may whim- 
per to the brook, and a ribbed skeleton of con- 
sumed arches, looming above the bleak banks of 
mist, from its cliff to the sea. 

As the strength of men to Giorgione, to Turn- 
er their weakness and vileness, were alone vis- 
ible. They themselves unworthy or ephemeral; 
their work, despicable, or decayed. In the 



458 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

Venetian's eyes, all beauty depended on man's 
presence and pride; in Turner's, on the solitude 
he had left, and the humiliation he had suffered. 

And thus the fate and issue of all his work 
were determined at once. He must be a painter 
of the strength of nature, there was no beauty 
elsewhere than in that; he must paint also the 
labour and sorrow and passing away of men; 
this was the great human truth visible to him. 

Their labour, their sorrow, and their death. 
Mark the three. Labour; by sea and land, in 
field and city, at forge and furnace, helm and 
plough. No pastoral indolence nor classic pride 
shall stand between him and the troubling of the 
world: still less between him and the toil of his 
country, — blind, tormented, unwearied, marvel- 
lous England. 

Also their Sorrow; Ruin of all their glorious 
work, passing away of their thoughts and their 
honour, mirage of pleasure. Fallacy of Hope; 
gathering of weed on temple step; gaining of 
wave on deserted strand; weeping of the mother 
for the children, desolate by her breathless first- 
born in the streets of the city, desolate by her 
last sons slain, among the beasts of the field. 

And their Death. That old Greek question 
again; — yet unanswered. The unconquerable 
spectre still flitting among the forest trees at 
twilight ; rising ribbed out of the sea-sand ; — white, 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 459 

a Strange Aphrodite, — out of the sea-foam; 
stretching its grey, cloven wings among the 
clouds; turning the light of their sunsets into 
blood. This has to be looked upon, and in a 
more terrible shape than ever Salvator or Durer 
saw it. The wreck of one guilty country does 
not infer the ruin of all countries, and need not 
cause general terror respecting the laws of the 
universe. 

Turner was eighteen years old when Napoleon 
came down on Areola. Look on the map of 
Europe, and count the blood stains on it, be- 
tween Areola and Waterloo. 

Not alone those blood-stains on the Alpine 
snow, and the blue of the Lombard plain. The 
English death was before his eyes also. No de- 
cent, calculable, consoled dying; no passing to 
rest like that of the aged burghers of Nuremberg 
town. No gentle processions to churchyards 
among the fields, the bronze crests bossed deep 
on the memorial tablets, and the skylark singing 
above them from among the corn. But the life 
trampled out in the slime of the street, crushed f 
to dust amidst the roaring of the wheel, tossed 
countlessly away into howling winter wind along 
five hundred leagues of rock-fanged shore. Or, 
worst of all, rotted down to forgotten graves 
through years of ignorant patience, and vain 
seeking for help from man, for hope in God — in- 



4^0 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

firm, imperfect yearning, as of motherless in- 
fants starving at the dawn; oppressed royalties 
of captive thought, vague ague-fits of bleak, 
amazed despair. 

So taught, and prepared for his life's labour, 
sate the boy at last alone among his fair English 
hills; and began to paint, with cautious toil, the 
rocks, and fields, and trickling brooks, and soft, 
white clouds of heaven. 



WORK AND PLAY. 

What is the proper function of play, with re- 
spect not to youth merely, but to all mankind? 

It is a much more serious question than may 
be at first supposed; for a healthy manner of 
play is necessary in order to a healthy manner 
of work: and because the choice of our recrea- 
tion is, in most cases, left to ourselves, while the 
nature of our work is as generally fixed by ne- 
cessity or authority, it may be well doubted 
whether more distressful consequences may not 
have resulted from mistaken choice in play than 
from mistaken direction in labour. 

Observe, however, that we are only concerned, 
here, with that kind of play which causes laugh- 
ter or implies recreation, not with that which 
consists in the excitement of theenerdes whether 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 46 1 

of body or mind. Muscular exertion is, indeed, 
in youth, one of the conditions of recreation; 
"but neither the violent bodily labour which 
children of all ages agree to call play," nor the 
grave excitement of the mental faculties in 
games of skill or chance, are in anywise con- 
nected with the state of feeling we have here to 
investigate, namely, that sportiveness which man 
possesses in common with many inferior crea- 
tures, but to which his higher faculties give 
nobler expression in the various manifestations 
of wit, humour, and fancy. 

With respect to the manner in which this in- 
stinct of playfulness is indulged or repressed, 
mankind are broadly distinguishable into four 
classes: the men who play wisely; who play nec- 
essarily; who play inordinately; and who play 
not at all. 

First: Those who play wisely. It is evident 
that the idea of any kind of play can only be 
associated with the idea of an imperfect, child- 
ish, and fatigable nature. As far as men can 
raise that nature, so that it shall no longer be 
interested by trifles or exhausted by toils, they 
raise it above play; he whose heart is at once 
fixed upon heaven, and open to the earth, so as 
to apprehend the importance of heavenly doc- 
trines, and the compass of human sorrow, will 
have little disposition for jest; and exactly in 



462 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

proportion to the breadth and depth of his char- 
acter and intellect, will be, in general, the inca- 
pability of surprise, or exuberant and sudden 
emotion, which must render play impossible. It 
is, however, evidently not intended that many 
men should even reach, far less pass their lives 
in, that solemn state of thoughtfulness, which 
brings them into the nearest brotherhood with 
their Divine Master; and the highest and healthi- 
est state which is competent to ordinary hu- 
manity appears to be that which, accepting the 
necessity of recreation, and yielding to the im- 
pulses of natural delight springing out of health 
and innocence, does, indeed, condescend often 
to playfulness, but never without such deep love 
of God, of truth, and of humanity, as shall make 
even its slightest words reverent, its idlest fan- 
cies profitable, and its keenest satire indulgent. 
Wordsworth and Plato furnish us with, perhaps, 
the finest and highest examples of this playful- 
ness: in the one case, unmixed with satire, the 
perfectly simple effusion of that spirit 
" Which gives to all the self-same bent, 
Whose life is wise, and innocent ;" 

— in Plato, and, by the by, in a very wise book 
of our own times, not unworthy of being named 
in such companionship, " Friends in Council," 
mingled with an exquisitely tender and loving 
satire. 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 463. 

Secondly: The men who play necessarily. 
That highest species of playfulness, which we 
have just been considering, is evidently the con- 
dition of a mind, not only highly cultivated, but 
so habitually trained to intellectual labour that 
it can bring a considerable force of accurate 
thought into its moments even of recreation. 
This is not possible, unless so much repose of 
mind and heart are enjoyed, even at the periods 
of greatest exertion, that the rest required by the 
system is diffused over the whole life. To the 
majority of mankind, such a state is evidently 
unattainable. They must, perforce, pass a large 
part of their lives in employments both irksome 
and toilsome, demanding an expenditure of en- 
ergy which exhausts the system, and yet consum- 
ing that energy upon subjects incapable of inter- 
esting the nobler faculties. When such employ- 
ments are intermitted, those noble instincts, 
fancy, imagination, and curiosity, are all hun- 
gry for the food which the labour of the day 
has denied to them, while yet the weariness of 
the body, in a great degree, forbids their appli- 
cation to any serious subject. They therefore 
exert themselves without any determined pur- 
pose, and under no vigorous restraint, but gather, 
as best they may, such various nourishment, and 
put themselves to such fantastic exer/:ise, as may 
soonest indemnify them for their past imprison- 



464 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

ment, and prepare them to endure their recur- 
rence. This sketching of the mental limbs as 
their fetters fall away, — this leaping and dancing 
of the heart and intellect, when they are restored 
to the fresh air of heaven, yet half paralyzed by 
their captivity, and unable to turn themselves to 
any earnest purpose, — I call necessary play. It 
is impossible to exaggerate its importance, 
whether in polity, or in art. 

Thirdly: The men who play inordinately. The 
most perfect state of society which, consistently 
with due understanding of man's nature, it, may 
be permitted us to conceive, would be one in which 
the whole human race were divided, more or less 
distinctly, into workers and thinkers; that is to 
say, into the two classes, who only play wisely, 
or play necessarily. But the number and the 
toil of the working class are enormously increased, 
probably more than doubled, by the vices of the 
men who neither play wisely nor necessarily, but 
are enabled by circumstances, and permitted by 
their want of principle, to make amusement the ob- 
ject of their existence. There is not any moment 
of the lives of such men which is not injurious to 
others; both because they leave the work undone 
which was appointed for them, and because they 
necessarily think wrongly, whenever it becomes 
compulsory upon them to think at all. The 
greater portion of the misery of this world arises 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 465 

from the false opinions of men whose idleness 
has physically incapacitated them from forming 
true ones. Every duty which we omit obscures 
some truth which we should have known; and 
the guilt of a life spent in the pursuit of pleas- 
ure is twofold, partly consisting in the perversion 
of action, and partly in the dissemination of 
falsehood. 

There is, however, a less criminal, though 
hardly less dangerous condition of mind; which, 
though not failing in its more urgent duties, fails 
in the finer conscientiousness which regulates the 
degree, and directs the choice, of amusement, at 
those times when amusement is allowable. The 
most frequent error in this respect is the want of 
reverence in approaching subjects of importance 
or sacredness, and of caution in the expression of 
thoughts which may encourage like irreverence 
in others: and these faults are apt to gain upon 
the mind until it becomes habitually more sensi- 
ble to what is ludicrous and accidental, than to 
what is grave and essential, in any subject that 
is brought before it; or even, at last, desires to 
perceive or to know nothing but what may end 
in jest. Very generally minds of this character 
are active and able; and many of them are so 
far conscientious, that they believe their jesting 
forwards their work. But it is difficult to cal- 
culate the harm they do, by destroying the 



466 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

reverence which is our best guide into all truth; 
for weakness and evil are easily visible, but 
greatness and goodness are often latent; and we 
do infinite mischief by exposing weakness to 
eyes which cannot comprehend greatness. This 
error, however, is more connected with abuses 
of the satirical than of the playful instinct; and 
I shall have more to say of it presently. 

The men who do not play at all: those who 
are so dull or so morose as to be incapable of 
inventing or enjoying jest, and in whom care, 
guilt, or pride represses all healthy exhilaration 
of the fancy; or else men utterly oppressed with 
labour, and driven too hard by the necessities of 
the world to be capable of any species of happy 
relaxation. We have next to consider the expres- 
sion throughout of the minds of men who indulge 
themselves in unnecessary play. It is evident that 
a large number of these men will be more refined 
and more highly educated than those who only 
play necessarily; their power of pleasure-seeking 
implies, in general, fortunate circumstances of 
life. It is evident also that their play will not be 
so hearty, so simple, or so joyful; and this defi- 
ciency of brightness will affect it in proportion 
to its unnecessary and unlawful continuance, 
until at last it becomes a restless and dissatisfied 
indulgence in excitement, or a painful delving 
after exhausted springs of pleasure. 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 467 



THE STATES OF THE FOREST. 

It was not from their lakes, nor their cliffs, 
nor their glaciers — though these were all pecu- 
liarly their possession, that the three venerable 
cantons or states received their name. They 
were not called the States of the Rock, nor the 
States of the Lake, but the States of the Forest. 
And the one of the three which contains the 
most touching record of the spiritual power of 
Swiss religion, in the name of the convent of the 
" Hill of Angels," has, for its own, none but the 
sweet childish name of " Under the Woods." 

And indeed you may pass under them if, leav- 
ing the most sacred spot in Swiss history, the 
Meadow of the Three Fountains, you bid the 
boatman row southward a little way by the 
shore of the Bay of Uri, Steepest there in its 
western side, the walls of its rocks ascend to 
heaven. Far, in the blue of evening, like a 
great cathedral pavement, lies the lake in its 
darkness: and you may hear the whisper of in- 
numerable falling waters return from the hollows 
of the cliff like the voices of a multitude pray- 
ing under their breath. From time to time the 
beat of a wave, slow lifted, where the rocks lean 
over the black depth, dies heavily as the last 
note of a requiem. Opposite, green with steep 
grass, and set with chalet villages, the Fron-Alp 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 



rises in one solemn glow of pastoral light and 
peace; and above, against the clouds of twilight, 
ghostly on the gray precipice, stand, myriad by 
myriad, the shadowy armies of the Unterwalden 
pine. 

I have seen that it is possible for the stranger 
to pass through this great chapel, with its font of 
waters, and mountain pillars, and vaults of cloud, 
without being touched by one noble thought, or 
stirred by any sacred passion; but for those who 
received from its waves the baptism of their 
youth, and learned beneath its rocks the fidelity 
of their manhood, and watched amidst its clouds 
the likeness of the dream of life, with the eyes 
of age — for these I will not believe that the 
mountain shrine was built, or the calm of its; 
forest-shadows guarded by their God, in vain. 



THE PAGAN SYSTEM OF EDUCATION. 

The Pagan system is completely triumphant; 
and the entire body of the so-called Christian 
world has established a system of instruction for 
its youth, wherein neither the history of Christ's 
Church, nor the language of God's law, is con- 
sidered a study of the smallest importance; 
wherein, of all subjects of human inquiry, his 
own rtligion is the one in which a youth's igno- 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 469 

ranee is most easily forgiven; * and in which it 
is held a light matter that he should be daily- 
guilty of lying, of debauchery, or of blasphemy, 
so only that he write Latin verses accurately, 
and wi<:h speed. 

I believe that in a few years more w^e shall 
wake from all these errors in astonishment, as 
from evil dreams; having been preserved, in the 
midst of their madness, by those hidden roots of 
active and earnest Christianity which God's 
grace has bound in the English nation with iron 
and brass. But in the Venetian, those roots 
themselves had withered; and, from the palace 
of their ancient religion, their pride cast them forth 
hopelessly to the pasture of the brute. From 
pride to infidelity, from infidelity to the unscru- 
pulous and insatiable pursuit of pleasure, and 
from this to irremediable degradation, the transi- 
tions were swift, like the falling of a star. The 
great palaces of the haughtiest nobles of Venice 
were stayed, before they had risen far above 
their foundations, by the blast of a penal pov- 
erty; and the wild grass, on the unfinished frag- 

* I shall not forget the impression made upon me at 
Oxford, when, going, up for my degree, and mentioning 
to one of the authorities that I had not had time enough 
to read the Epistles properly, I was told, that " the Epis- 
tles were separate sciences, and I need not trouble myself 
about them." 



470 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

ments of their mighty shafts, waves at the tide- 
mark where the power of the godless people 
first heard the " Hitherto shalt thou come." 
And the regeneration in which they had so vainly 
trusted, — the new birth and clear dawning, as 
they thought it, of all art, all knowledge, and all 
hope, — became to them as that dawn which 
Ezekiel saw on the hills of Israel: " Behold the 
day; behold it is come. The rod hath blos- 
somed, pride hath budded, violence is risen up 
into a rod of wickedness. None of them shall 
remain^ nor of their multitude; let not the buyer 
rejoice, nor the seller mourn, for wrath is upon 
all the multitude thereof." 

The fact is, we distrust each other and our- 
selves. We know that if, on any occasion of 
general intercourse, we turn to our next neigh- 
bour, and put to him some searching or testing 
question, we shall, in nine cases out of ten, dis- 
cover him to be only a Christian in his own way, 
and as far as he thinks proper, and that he doubts 
of many things which we ourselves do not be- 
lieve strongly enough to hear doubted without 
danger. What is in reality cowardice and faith- 
lessness, we call charity; and consider it the 
part of benevolence sometimes to forgive men's 
evil practice for the sake of their accurate faith, 
and sometimes to forgive their confessed heresy 
for the sake of f^r\i admirable practice. And 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 4/1 

under this shelter of charity, humility, and faint- 
heartedness, the world, unquestioned by others- 
or by itself, mingles with and overwhelms the 
small body of Christians, legislates for them, 
moralizes for them, reasons for them; and 
though itself of course greatly and beneficently 
influenced by the association, and held much in 
check by its pretence to Christianity, yet under- 
mines, in nearly the same degree, the sincerity 
and practical power of Christianity itself. 



THEOLOGY OF SPENSER. 

The following analysis of the first books of 
the " Faerie Queene," may be interesting to read- 
ers who have been in the habit of reading the 
noble poem too hastily to connect its parts com- 
pletely together; and may perhaps induce them 
to more careful study of the rest of the poem. 

The Redcross Knight is Holiness, — the " Pie- 
tas" of St. Mark's, the " Devotio" of Orcagna, — 
meaning, I think, in general. Reverence and 
Godly Fear. 

This virtue, in the opening of the book, has 
Truth (or Una) at its side, but presently enters 
the Wandering Wood, and encounters the ser- 
pent Error; that is to say. Error in her universal 
form, the first enemy of Reverence and Holi- 



472 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

ness and more especially Error as founded on 
learning; for when Holiness strangles her, 

"Her vomit /u// of bookes and papers was, 

With loathly frogs and toades, which eyes did lacke." 

Having vanquished this first ojDen and palpa- 
ble form of Error, as Reverence and Religion 
must always vanquish it, the Knight encounters 
Hypocrisy, or Archimagus: Holiness cannot de- 
tect Hypocrisy, but believes him, and goes home 
with him; whereupon Hypocrisy succeeds in 
separating Holiness from Truth; and the Knight 
(Holiness) and Lady (Truth) go forth separately 
from the house of Archimagus. 

Now observe, the moment Godly Fear, or 
Holiness, is separated from Truth, he meets In- 
fidelty, or the Knight Sans Foy: Infidelity hav- 
ing Falsehood, or Duessa, riding behind him. 
The instant the Redcrosse Knight is aware of 
the attack of Infidelity, he 

" Gan fairly couch his speare, and towards ride." 

He vanquishes and slays Infidelity; but is de- 
ceived by his companion, Falsehood, and takes 
her for his lady: thus showing the condition of 
Religion, when, after being attacked by Doubt, 
and remaining victorious, it is nevertheless se- 
duced, by any form of Falsehood, to pay rever- 
ence where it ought not. This, then, is the first 
fortune of Godly Fear separated from Truth. 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 473 

The poet then returns to Truth, separated from 
Godly Fear. She is immediately attended by a 
lion, or Violence, which makes her dreaded 
wherever she comes; and when she enters the 
mart of Superstition, this Lion tears Kirkrapine 
in pieces: showing how Truth, separated from 
Godliness, does indeed put an end to the abuses 
of Superstition, but does so violently and des- 
perately. She then meets again with Hypo- 
crisy, whom she mistakes for her own lord, or 
Godly Fear, and travels a little way under his 
guardianship (Hypocrisy thus not unfrequently 
appearing to defend the truth), until they are 
both met by Lawlessness, or the Knight Sans 
Loy, whom Hypocrisy cannot resist. Lawless- 
ness overthrows Hypocrisy, and seizes upon 
Truth, first slaying her lion attendant: showing 
that the first aim of license is to destroy the 
force and authority of Truth. Sans Loy then 
takes Truth captive, and bears her away. Now 
this Lawlessness is the " unrighteousness," or 
"adikia,'*of St. Paul; and his bearing Truth 
away captive, is a type of those " who hold the 
truth in unrighteousness," — that is to say, gen- 
erally, of men who, knowing what is true, make 
the truth give way to their own purposes, or use 
It only to forward them, as is the case with so 
many of the popular leaders of the present day. 
Una is then delivered from Sans Loy by the 



4-74 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

satyrs, to show that Nature, in the end, must 
work out the deliverance of the truth, although, 
where it has been captive to Lawlessness, that 
deliverance can only be obtained through Sav- 
ageness, and a return to barbarism. Una is then 
taken from among the satyrs by Satyrane, the 
son of a satyr and a " lady myld, fair Thyamis," 
(typifying the early steps of renewed civilizatioUj 
and its rough, and hardy character " mousled up 
in life and maners wilde"), who, meeting again 
with Sans Loy, enters instantly into rough and 
prolonged combat with him: showing how the 
early organization of a hardy nation must be 
wrought out through much discouragement from 
Lawlessness. This contest the poet leaving for 
the time undecided, returns to trace the adven- 
tures of the Redcrosse Knight, or Godly Fear,, 
who, having vanquished Infidelity, presently is 
led by Falsehood to the house of pride: thus 
showing how religion, separated from truth, is 
first tempted by doubts of God, and then by the 
pride of life. The description of this house of 
Pride is one of the most elaborate and noble 
pieces in the poem; and here we begin to get at 
the proposed system of Virtues and Vices. For 
Pride, as queen, has six other vices yoked in her 
chariot; namely, first, Idleness, then Gluttony, 
Lust, Avarice, Envy, and Anger, all driven on 
by " Sathan, with a smarting whip in hand.**" 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS, 4/5 

Prom these lower vices and their company, 
Godly Fear, though lodging in the house of 
Pride, holds aloof; but he is challenged, and has 
a. hard battle to fight with Sans Joy, the brother 
of Sans Foy: showing, that though he has con- 
quered Infidelity, and does not give himself up 
to the allurements of Pride, he is yet exposed, so 
long as he dwells in her house, to distress of 
mind and loss of his accustomed rejoicing be- 
fore God. He, however, having partly con- 
quered Despondency, or Sans Joy, Falsehood 
goes down to Hades, in order to obtain drugs to 
maintain the power or life of Despondency; but, 
meantime, the Knight leaves the house of Pride; 
falsehood pursues and overtakes him, and finds 
him by a fountain side, of which the waters are 
* ' Dull and slow. 
And all that drinke thereof do faint and feeble grow. " 

Of which the meaning is, that Godly Fear, after 
passing through the house of Pride, is exposed to 
drowsiness and feebleness of watch; as, after 
Peter's boast, came Peter's sleeping, from weak- 
ness of the flesh, and then, last of all, Peter's fall. 
And so it follows: for the Redcrosse Knight, be- 
ing overcome with faintness by drinking of the 
fountain, is thereupon attacked by the giant 
Orgoglio, overcome, and thrown by him into a 
dungeon. This Orgoglio is Orgueil, or Carnal 
Pride; not the pride of life, spiritual and subtle. 



47^ PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 

but the common and vulgar pride in the power 
of this world; and his throwing the Redcrosse 
Knight into a dungeon, is a type of the captivity 
of true religion under the corporal power of cor- 
rupt churches, more especially of the Church of 
Rome, and of its gradually wasting away in un- 
known places, while carnal pride has the pre- 
eminence over all things. That Spenser means, 
especially, the pride of the Papacy, is shown by 
the 1 6th stanza of the book; for there the giant 
Orgoglio is said to have taken Duessa, or False- 
hood, for his " deare," and to have set upon her 
head a triple crown, and endowed her with royal 
majesty, and made her to ride upon a seven- 
headed beast. 

In the meantime, the dwarf, the attendant of 
the Redcrosse Knight, takes his arms, and find- 
ing Una tells her of the captivity of her lord. 
Una, in the midst of her mourning, meets Prince 
Arthur, in whom, as Spenser himself tells us, is 
set forth generally Magnificence,- but who, as is 
shown by the choice of the hero's name, is more 
especially the magnificence, or literally, " great 
doing" of the kingdom of England. This power 
of England, going forth with Truth, attacks 
Orgoglio, or the Pride of Papacy, slays him; strips 
Duessa, or Falsehood, naked: and liberates the 
Redcrosse Knight. The magnificent and well 
known description of Despair follows, by whom 



PRECIOUS THOUGHTS. 477" 

the Redcrosse Knight is hard bested, on account 
of his past errors and captivity, and is only saved 
by Truth, who, preceiving him to be stiil feeble, 
brings him to the house of Ccelia, called, in the 
argument of the canto, Holiness, but properly, 
Heavenly Grace, the mother of the Virtues. 
Her " three daughters, well upbrought," are Faith, 
Hope, and Charity. Her porter is Humility; be- 
cause Humility opens the door of Heavenly 
Grace. Zeal and Reverence are her chamberlains, 
introducing the new comers to her presence; her 
gioom, or servant, is Obedience; and her physi- 
cian, Patience. Under the commands of Charity, 
the matron Mercy rules over her hospital, under 
whose care the knight is healed of his sickness; 
and it is to be especially noticed how much im- 
portance Spenser, though never ceasing to chastise 
all hypocrisies and mere observances of form, 
attaches to true and faithful penance in effecting 
this cure. Having his strength restored to him, 
the Knight is trusted to the guidance of Mercy, 
who, leading him forth by a narrow and thorny 
way, first instructs him in the seven works of 
Mercy, and then leads him to the hill of Heavenly 
Contemplation; whence, having a sight of the 
New Jerusalem, as Christian of the Delectable 
Mountains, he goes forth to the final victory over 
Satan, the old serpent, with which the book 
closes. 

THE END. 



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